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3D Printing News Briefs: April 12, 2019

We’ve got news about a contest to start off today’s 3D Printing News Briefs, followed by some business news and 3D printed jewelry. Weerg has announced the second edition of its “3D Printing Project Award” contest. Moving on, Bastian Solutions worked with Fast Radius to create a robotic materials handler using HP 3D printing, while Fast Radius announced that it has closed a round of Series B funding. Finally, an SLM 3D printer is being used by a person you might recognize to fabricate unique metal rings.

2nd Edition of Weerg’s 3D Printing Project Award Contest

3D printing and CNC machining platform Weerg, based in Gardigiano, Italy, just announced the second edition of its “3D Printing Project Award” contest, which promotes creativity, experimentation culture, and innovation in design manufacturing. The company, which offers the largest Italian installation of HP’s MJF 4210 3D printers, invites designers and developers to create “an iconic object completely printed in 3D” for the chance to win a €500 Weerg coupon, and an interesting social media opportunity – star as the protagonist in a professional video that will highlight his/her designer skills, which Weerg will promote.

“After the success we obtained last edition, we decided to put to test once more our recently doubled and enhanced production department, and to give visibility to the most creative talent in 3D Printing. The Weerg Award was created to stimulate the potential and the desire to innovate of tomorrow’s designers who are starting to come face to face with the opportunities offered by additive manufacturing,” said Weerg’s founder Matteo Rigamonti. “In addition, it will allow us to maximize the performance of HP printers by creating very original and sophisticated items.”

You have until this Sunday, April 14th to submit your entry by posting it directly to Weerg’s Facebook and Instagram pages. The winner will be announced on Monday.

New Robot Warehouse Picker Features 3D Printed Parts

Indianapolis-based Bastian Solutions, a Toyota Advanced Logistics company, has launched its Shuttle System: an efficient, flexible robotic materials handler with dexterity to spare. 45% of the final build-of-material (BOM) on the system’s robotic arm were 3D printed with HP and Carbon 3D printers. The durable polymer joints of the robotic picker were made with HP’s Multi Jet Fusion (MJF) technology, while its fingers and gripper were 3D printed out of unique materials, like EPU 40, using Carbon’s Digital Light Synthesis (DLS) technology. The company displayed its new Shuttle System this week at ProMat 2019 in Chicago.

“We envisioned that additively manufacturing specific parts would make the Bastian Solutions Shuttle System the most efficient and agile robotic picker available on the market. The additive manufacturing process will enable us to customize each robot picker to fit a customer’s particular warehouse environment,” said Ron Daggett, the Vice President of Technology and R&D, Bastian Solutions.

These parts were 3D printed at the Chicago headquarters of industrial-grade additive manufacturing facility Fast Radius.

Fast Radius Raised $48 Million in Series B Funding

Speaking of Fast Radius, the company recently announced that it had raised $48 million in a Series B funding round, which it will use to continue expanding its production-grade AM platform through application engineering, sales teams, and software development. Its software platform, the Fast Radius Operating System (FROS), supports customers across the entire lifecycle of a product, helping them conduct engineering and economic evaluations, find potential applications, and 3D print industrial-grade parts at scale. The funding round was led by the company’s previous collaborator UPS, and Drive Capital was also a strong participant; other participants include previous investors Jump Capital, Skydeck, and Hyde Park Venture Partners.

Pat McCusker, the COO at Fast Radius, said, “This additional funding will allow us to further expand our partnerships with leading global companies across aerospace, consumer, industrial, medical, and automotive verticals.”

Bam Margera 3D Printing Jewelry with SLM Technology

And now for something totally different…Bam Margera, a professional skateboarder, stunt performer, filmmaker, musician, and TV personality who rose to fame as one of the main members of MTV’s reality show Jackass from the early aughts, is now designing jewelry, which he 3D prints on an SLM Solutions 125 system that he purchased. He is selling the unique metal rings and pendants on his official BamMerch website.

According to the website, “BamMerch is Bam Margera´s new lifestyle brand offering various jewelry and apparel, our store launched in December 2016.

“All items are crafted in Estonia, using combination of high-tech metal 3D printing and hand crafting to create extremely unique and detailed jewelry.”

All of the jewelry is 3D printed in-house out of sterling silver, and then carefully polished in ten stages. Some of the pieces, like the pretty Margeras Pendant with three intertwined hearts, are available for as little as $17, with prices ranging all the way up to $149 for the Skull Ring v2. Margera also offers a range of bundles. Check out the video below to see the 3D printing process for some of Margera’s rings, but be warned – if you go searching for more information about his 3D printed jewelry on Twitter or Instagram, there’s a lot of profanity and other NSFW content.

Discuss these stories, and other 3D printing topics, at 3DPrintBoard.com or share your thoughts in the Facebook comments below. 

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3D Printing News Briefs: September 22, 2018

In today’s 3D Printing News Briefs, we’ve got the speaker lineup for next month’s NAMIC Global Additive Manufacturing Summit in Singapore. Prusa and Cincinnati Incorporated are both releasing new 3D printing materials, and 3D Center is collaborating with 3YOURMIND to launch a 3D printing platform for the Scandinavian market. A British car manufacturer turns to Stratasys 3D printing for prototyping purposes, and a student used reverse engineering and 3D printing to redesign a Nintendo 64 joystick system.

2018 NAMIC Global Additive Manufacturing Summit Speakers

On October 17th and 18th, the 2018 Global Additive Manufacturing Summit, conducted by Singapore’s National Additive Manufacturing Innovation Cluster (NAMIC), will be held, and co-located as part of Industrial Transformation ASIA-PACIFIC. Hosted by NTUitive, the summit, which is said to be the country’s largest gathering of additive manufacturing experts, will highlight key AM opportunities and developments in multiple applications, such as aerospace, automotive, biomedical, building and construction, marine, and transportation.

This is the last week to purchase your ticket at the early bird rates. After seeing the line-up of speakers coming to the event, this is an event you definitely won’t want to miss. Some of the speakers include Dr. Behrang Poorganji, the Head of Materials Development for GE Additive: Apis Cor’s Anna Cheniuntai, R&D and Business Development; Kelvin Wee, the APAC Sales Director for Materialise; and Professor Paul C. Ho, with the Department of Pharmacy at the National University of Singapore. You can register for the 2018 NAMIC Global Additive Manufacturing Summit here.

Prusa Releasing In-House 3D Printing Filament

Fresh off the multi-material upgrade for its Prusa i3 MK3/MK2.5, Prusa has more good news – this week, the company released its new filament, Prusament, which is made entirely in-house. CEO and Founder, Josef Průša, said that the company was not happy with the over-exaggerated quality and specs that “most filament companies claim but don’t deliver,” which continued to cause its users to have issues poor print quality and jams.

“So we built a factory and just started to sell our own filament,” Průša told 3DPrint.com. “It took us over a year but we have something pretty special. We guarantee 20µm precision and every spool is traceable on our website, where you can see the full inspection report. I believe we are the only one to do this and hope to set a precedent.”

Check out the sample spool of Prusament for yourself – you’ll see that Prusa isn’t messing around.

Cincinnati Incorporated Launches New Carbon Fiber Material

Cincinnati Incorporated has developed a new material for its SAAM that is ideal for custom tooling and fixture applications. The carbon fiber resin creates a high strength-to-weight ratio and superior surface finishes.

Another company with a new 3D printing material launch this week is Cincinnati Incorporated (CI) – it just released a new carbon fiber resin material for its SAAM (Small Area Additive Manufacturing) 3D printing system. Because it’s been reinforced with carbon fiber, the lightweight, impact-resistant material is durable, stiff, and has low warping, along with accurate parts featuring advanced inter-layer adhesion results. It also has excellent surface finish, making it a good choice for applications in assembly, CMM, CNC fixtures, custom tooling, and has a very high strength-to-weight ratio.

 

 

 

Morgan Motor Company Turns to Stratasys 3D Printing for Prototyping

Family-owned British motor car manufacturer Morgan Motor Company is no stranger to 3D printing, and recently turned to the technology again for help with prototyping on the factory floor. In order to get rid of the endless talks with suppliers and lower the time to market, the company, which manufactures roughly 1,000 vehicles per year, invested in a Stratasys Fortus 250mc from Tri-Tech 3D, a Stratasys reseller in the UK.

“Since the introduction of 3D printing, using the Stratasys Fortus 250mc, Morgan have been able to try more daring designs within research and development,” said Tom Morris, a CAD technician with Morgan Motor Company. “It’s given us the opportunity to take these designs, trial them early on, giving us physical samples, which essentially cuts out the whole quoting process of liaising with suppliers, delivering these parts back to Morgan. Morgan are a low volume vehicle manufacturer, so the ability to be able to design parts on CAD, 3D print them, and take them to the shop floor at a very quick rate is vital to our success as a business.”

Watch the video below to learn more:

Fixing Nintendo 64 Joystick with Reverse Engineering and 3D Printing

California Polytechnic (Cal Poly) student and retro video gaming fan Nam Le was tired of having to find replacement controller joysticks for Nintendo 64 systems – a common problem many Nintendo fans have dealt with. So he took matters into his own hands, and contacted 3D Hubs for help fixing the problem. Le ended up reverse engineering the nearly 20-year-old components, 3D printing them, and redesigning the entire joystick system. It took him three months to disassemble the original controller, measure the components, and design them in CAD – a very impressive task, as he’d only ever taken a basic 3D modeling introduction class.

He determined that the joystick’s whole assembly would wear down over time, causing part failure, and designed the new components so that they were very sturdy and easy to replace. Le 3D printed the gear teeth and housing with Visijet M3 Crystal material, and 3D Hubs manufactured his redesigned joystick out of Nylon PA12 material on an HP Multi Jet Fusion 3D printer.

“Generally, harder materials won’t be worn by materials of a lower hardness,” Le explained about his material choice. “The result is having only one part wear compared to every old component wearing. Every once in a while the stick will have to be replaced, but it takes a longer time to wear and is a better cheap alternative than buying a new controller.”

Six months in, Le’s 3D printed prototype joystick controller shows no signs of breaking.

Discuss these stories and other 3D printing topics at 3DPrintBoard.com or share your thoughts in the Facebook comments below. 

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3D Printing and CNC Machining Platform Weerg Announces New Headquarters

There are many 3D printing platforms available online, but not as many that offer both 3D printing and CNC machining. One site that does is the new platform Weerg, which offers both additive and subtractive manufacturing services to customers. All a client needs to do is upload their 3D file to the site, and Weerg will provide an instant quote and then 3D print or CNC machine it and deliver it within five days. The company is based in Marghera, Italy, near Venice, but delivers worldwide, and will soon be relocating to a new facility in Gardigiano.

“We chose a building that could respond to our sudden needs for business expansion and therefore space dedicated to production systems,” said Weerg’s Matteo Rigamonti. “It is a former knitwear factory of about 27,000 square meters, which we will occupy initially 5,000 square meters, in addition to other 3,000 square meters already optioned. A choice that allows us to envisage future expansions of the machine park without requiring further transfers.”

Interior of an empty warehouse

 

Weerg offers CNC machining services with 5-axis continuous Hermle milling machines and Mazak Integrex multitasking lathes, as well as Hitachi tools and Hypermill Open Mind CAM software. In terms of 3D printing, the company utilizes the HP Jet Fusion 3D 4200. Weerg possesses six of the Jet Fusion 3D printers, the largest installation in southern Europe. When the new facility is opened, the latest installations of Hermle machines will be carried out, consisting of two batteries of five Hermle machines each, fully automated with anthropomorphic robots.

Weerg prides itself on the simplicity of its site and processes. The production process is almost fully automated, facilitated by unique evaluation and management software that was developed by the company’s R&D department. The software directs the machinery, which was selected according to parameters of efficiency, productivity, quality and automation.

“One of our mottos is ‘Set and forget’: clearly we address our customers to whom we want to offer a purchasing experience that is absolutely new in the world of mechanics: the estimate in a few seconds and the certainty of the delivery date, which can be chosen from 3 to 10 days,” continued Rigamonti. “But not only that, because this slogan also tells the story of our organization, where all the steps are managed through advanced software that drastically reduces manual intervention by operators and therefore procedures relegated to craftsmanship that does not belong to us.”

Weerg has the Trusted Shops certification, a stamp of quality for e-commerce in Europe. The company intends to conquer the markets throughout the continent, expanding outward from its Venetian origins. Its customers come from a wide range of industries: automotive, boats, mechanics, aerospace, and a variety of industrial automation sectors. Every day the site sees more than 15,000 requests for quotes, which are processed within seconds thanks to the company’s software.

Currently Weerg does not offer design services, just production, but that may follow as the company expands. Weerg’s materials selection is growing, and it promises competitive prices thanks to the efficient, modern equipment and round-the-clock production it utilizes.

Discuss this and other 3D printing topics at 3DPrintBoard.com or share your thoughts below. 

[Images courtesy of Weerg]