atum3D & Mitsubishi Introducing UV Resin for DLP Station 3D Printers at formnext

At formnext 2017, not long after announcing new partnerships and resellers the same year, Netherlands-based digital light processing (DLP) specialist and 3D manufacturing leader atum3D introduced its DLP Station 5 3D printer – the upgrade to its DLP Station 4 system. At the 2018 formnext event, the company introduced an open resin platform for the 3D printer.

Now, ahead of next month’s formnext 2019, atum3D, along with Mitsubishi Chemical Corporation, has announced that the two companies will present a newly developed UV resin for the DLP Station printer at the event.

“atum3D is proud to collaborate with Mitsubishi Chemical, an experienced and renowned company for UV resins,” stated Joep Koopmans, the Manager of Business Development and Partnerships at atum3D, in a joint press release. “As an instrumental part of the integral application solution that also includes hardware and software, we believe this technologically advanced material offers new opportunities for short lead times, fast design and development iterations as well as local, just-in-time production of automotive interior parts.”

Tokyo-based Mitsubishi Chemical, which employs more than 40,000 people at 351 affiliates in over 30 different countries around the world, offers a wide range of chemistry-based solutions that help solve environmental and social issues. The company is an expert in formulating and creating UV resins, which enable parts to be 3D printed without ridges, and in one piece instead of multiple ones.

“I’m glad to have such a professional partner like atum3D on board to develop the materials our customers demand,” said Dick Hoogerdijk, the Director of Marketing and New Business Development at Mitsubishi Chemical Europe. “This new development shows the commitment of Mitsubishi Chemical to become one of the leading suppliers in the 3D printing sector.”

By matching up Mitsubishi Chemical’s UV resin proficiency with atum3D’s know-how in combining its own 3D printing hardware and software with chemical expertise to create customer application solutions, the 3D industry is seeing a pretty great match. This also marks more expansion by Mitsubishi into SLA and DLP from its previous activities in FDM. This new UV resin is the first result of the partnership between the two companies, which began last year.

atum3D’s DLP Station 5 3D Printer

Diabeam, this new UV resin for DLP 3D printing, has specific properties for both heat and impact resistance, which are normally not easy to attain in photocurable resin materials. The resin can solidify under a 365 nm light source, and also has a high scratch resistance – great for 3D printing covers and frames for automotive interiors and long-lasting interior trim parts.

The DLP Station 5 3D printer is available in both a 365 nm wavelength option and a 405 nm one as well, and its open resin platform allows users to select different resolutions and wavelengths. It has a resolution up to 6 µm after Tolerance Tuning, and features increased accuracy, consistency, and speed when compared to the DLP Station 4.

To see the new Diabeam UV resin for yourself, and learn more about its possible applications, you can visit both companies at formnext 2019 – atum3D will be at booth B19 in Hall 11.1, while Mitsubishi Chemical Europe GmbH will be located at booth B139 in Hall 12.1.

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Researchers develop guidelines for 3D printing miniature soft robots in high resolution

Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD), Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech) and  Zhejiang University (ZJU) have collaborated on the development of process flow guides for 3D printing miniature soft robotic actuators.  Demonstrating the applicability of their additive manufactured actuators, the researchers have produced a soft debris remover with an integrated miniature gripper. The […]

Fortify Closes $10M Series A Funding Led by Accel

Fortify, known for their next-generation composites and Digital Composite Technology (DCM), has just completed a $10M Series A funding led by Accel. The Boston-headquartered additive manufacturing startup also received funding from Neotribe, Prelude Ventures, and Mainspring Capital Partners. Following a previous seed round this year also, yielding $2.5M, this latest funding will support the Fortify’s Discovery Partner Program and further growth of the Fortify team as they continue to create technology to be used in applications like aerospace, manufacturing, and automotive—with end-use parts in electrical connectors, impellers, mixers, and specialty drones.

Fortify is known for their use of magnetics (Fluxprint technology) and digital light processing 3D printing, allowing them to fabricate parts made with composites, therefore imbued with high-performance mechanical properties. Composite research was performed at Northeastern University by Dr. Randall Erb and Dr. Joshua Martin. The company has already seen huge growth this year, with its staff doubling, and new office space required for its overall expansion.

“Now more than ever before, it’s vital that the U.S. economy has a strong manufacturing ecosystem,” said Eric Wolford, venture partner at Accel. “Fortify is uniquely positioned to help lead the resurgence of American manufacturing by using tech to produce best-in-class parts for the digital age. We’re thrilled to support the entire Fortify team as they continue to set a new standard in manufacturing.”

Fluxprint

The Discovery Partner Program gives a select number of Fortify customers earlier access to DCM. Currently, Fortify has noted ‘dramatic improvements’ for users 3D printing with the DCM platform. Fortify says that users also report up 10-100x in improvements, when comparing to 3D prints of other types. Molds are being supplied for customers right now, with beta machines going out in early 2020. Their new Fortify Fiber Platform has just been rolled out also, as the company continues to work with companies like DSM and BASF.

“Material properties are the dominant factor driving adoption of Additive Manufacturing across industries,” said Ben Arnold, Fortify VP of Business Development. “Our open materials platform leverages the world’s leading polymer chemists as they continually innovate. We reinforce these base resin with fiber as we print to gain significantly higher levels of performance. It’s quite exciting that even in this early stage of the company, we have customers buying parts for use in production applications.”

“We’ve achieved so much since our founding, and we’re eager to expand on our platform capabilities,” said Josh Martin, CEO and founder of Fortify. “With the support of our investors, we will focus on innovation, bring our technology to new partners, and grow our product offerings.”

Notable new hires include industry veteran Ben Arnold as VP Business Development, most recently of Desktop Metal and Dave Colucci, formerly of Soft Robotics, as their new Embedded Systems Lead Engineer.

Researchers around the world are involved in the realm of 3D printing materials, from biomaterials to self-healing capsules, and even soft materials for robotics. What do you think of this news? Let us know your thoughts! Join the discussion of this and other 3D printing topics at 3DPrintBoard.com.

Digital composite manufacturing

[Source / Images: Fortify]

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Nanofabrica Releases Micron Resolution 3D Printing Platform Aimed at Industrial Applications

Israeli 3D printing startup Nanofabrica, which was founded in 2016 and chosen by the the I-YBI collaborative in 2017 to get help entering the American market, is working to mass-produce 3D printed parts on the micro and nanoscale. Now, its hard work has paid off, as the company just commercially launched, in the words of CEO Jon Donner, a true “mass manufacturing” micron resolution that’s targeted directly at pan-industrial micro manufacturing applications expanding throughout sectors like aerospace, automotive, medical, optics, and semiconductor.

Most manufacturers looking to fabricate tiny components and product in volume, with features at the micron resolution, have had to use more traditional micro molding and machining technologies. But the startup’s micro 3D printing process is cost-effective and fast, with the ability to achieve highly accurate results.

“The discipline of Additive Manufacturing (AM) or 3D Printing (3DP) is regularly cited as being disruptive to traditional manufacturing processes,” Donner wrote.

“AM has made the shift from a prototyping technology to a true production technology, but many lack the insight about what can really be produced on AM platforms, and the inherent characteristics of the process that add significant advantages when it come to cost, complexity, and timeliness of manufacture.”

3D printer manufacturers are doing what they can to combat adoption barriers, and are refining their technologies by adding valuable features or looking for niches that are under-served, or not even served at all…such as micro manufacturing.

“When viewed from the perspective that across industry today there is an inexorable shift towards miniaturisation, with many applications demanding extremely exacting levels of micron and sub-micron precision on macro and micro parts, there is huge potential for an AM platform that can service this trend,” Donner stated. “A whole raft of traditional production platforms have developed to cater for this demand, but until recently, the ability for AM to produce such precision at all —let alone at volume production levels — has been impossible.”

Nanofabrica develops its own proprietary materials, focusing on common plastics like ABS and PP. Its AM platform is perfectly tailored for micro and nano manufacturing, and, according to TCT, is made up of two new 3D printers: the Industrial System, said to achieve a one-micron resolution with a 50 x 50 x 100 mm build volume, and the Workshop system. This provides manufacturers who need “micron and sub-micron levels of resolution and surface finish” with a bespoke end-to-end solution.

“Successful AM platform developers in today’s crowded market need to focus technological advances on areas that open up innovation and the manufacture of products and components hitherto impossible using AM,” Donner wrote. “It is here that Nanofabrica has been particularly successful, having identified a series of killer applications where there is burgeoning market demand, where the only route to market at the moment is through disproportionately expensive or restrictive traditional manufacturing technologies, and where the use of AM can open up significant advances on terms of design and functionality.

“These killer applications exist in the area of optics, semi-conductors, micro electronics, MEMS, micro fluidics, and life sciences. Products such as casing for microelectronics, micro springs, micro actuators and micro sensors, and numerous medical applications such as micro valves, micro syringes, and micro implantable or surgical devices.”

Nanofabrica’s new 3D printers are based on a Digital Light Processor (DLP) engine, which is combined with adaptive optics to ensure repeatable micron levels of resolution – a necessary feature when creating cost-effective, highly precise components for industrial manufacturing. Additionally, the AM platform uses multiple sensors to allow for a closed feedback loop, which also helps deliver high accuracy.

The startup’s AM platform is also unique in how it combines several technologies in order to “achieve micron resolution over centimeter-sized parts.”

Donner explained, “Specifically, the company has taken its innovative use of adaptive optics and enhanced this imaging unit with technology and know-how used in the semiconductor industry (where the attainment of micron and sub-micron resolutions over many centimetres is routine.) By working at the intersection of semiconductors and AM, Nanofabrica is able to build large “macro” parts with intricate micro details. It can also do this at speed by introducing a multi resolution strategy, meaning that the parts where fine details are required are printed relatively slowly, but in the areas where the details aren’t so exacting, the part is printed at a speeds 10 to 100 times faster. This makes the entire printing speed anything from 5 to 100 times faster than other micro AM platforms.”

Nanofabrica’s hardware enables multi resolution capability due to “a trade off between speed and resolution,” while its software algorithms define and section off both the part and its 3D printing path into low and high resolution areas to be fed into the machine parameters and path. A “spectrum of resolutions” make it possible to optimize speed and achieve “satisfactory results,” while the “final algorithm family” is focused on file preparation and optimizing parameters like supports and print angle.

“Perhaps of key interest is the fact that AM is relatively agnostic to part complexity, and it is possible to design and manufacture unique geometries. As such, the Nanofabrica technology becomes an enabling technology, and a true stimulator of innovation, making the manufacture of parts and features previously impossible, possible,” Donner said.

“Nanofabrica is aware — as the first mover in the micro AM space for production — that it establishes a partnership relationship with its customers that extends from product inception through to mass manufacturing. The technology is today the only micron-resolution platform aimed at true manufacturing applications not just R&D projects, the real game changer being the combination of commercially-oriented build volumes, optimised materials, significant lines of investment, and a platform that is competitively priced.”

The startup is also an advocate of customer collaboration for the purposes of optimizing outcomes, and provides advice on design for additive manufacturing (DfAM), which is often used for macro AM platforms but not micro.

“It is because of this that Nanofabrica promotes a collaborative relationship with its customers to locate the opportunities and avoid the bear traps that exist when adopting — or considering adopting — AM for production purposes in the micro manufacturing arena,” Donner said.

Nanofabrica’s micro 3D printing platform is still new, which is another reason it’s looking to ” partner with key players in relevant sectors.” This will allow the startup to better customize its technology for specific applications in a variety of markets.

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

[Images provided by Nanofabrica]

Researchers Make Strong, 3D Printed Expandable Origami Structures for Engineering Applications

Rearranging the same units can change a structure from one that can support a load 100 times its weight to one that will fold flat under the same load. [Image: Soft Matter]

A collaborative team of researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology, the Beijing Institute of Technology, and Peking University are using 3D printing to directly build reconfigurable origami assemblages that can expand and fold. But even better, the 3D printed structures also have enough load-bearing capability and strength to be used in engineering applications.

In a paper published in Soft Matters, titled “3D printing of complex origami assemblages for reconfigurable structures,” the researchers explained how they used digital light processing (DLP) 3D printing to fabricate structures with hollow features.

With this method, far less support material is required for 3D printing hollow features, and softer materials, necessary for flexible structures, can be used.

The abstract of the paper reads, “Origami engineering principles have recently been applied to a wide range of applications, including soft robots, stretchable electronics, and mechanical metamaterials. In order to achieve the 3D nature of engineered structures (e.g. load-bearing capacity) and capture the desired kinematics (e.g., foldability), many origami-inspired engineering designs are assembled from smaller parts and often require binding agents or additional elements for connection. Attempts at direct fabrication of 3D origami structures have been limited by available fabrication technologies and materials. Here, we propose a new method to directly 3D print origami assemblages (that mimic the behavior of their paper counterparts) with acceptable strength and load-bearing capacity for engineering applications. Our approach introduces hinge-panel elements, where the hinge regions are designed with finite thickness and length. The geometrical design of these hinge-panels, informed by both experimental and theoretical analysis, provides the desired mechanical behavior. In order to ensure foldability and repeatability, a novel photocurable elastomer system is developed and the designs are fabricated using digital light processing-based 3D printing technology. Various origami assemblages are produced to demonstrate the design flexibility and fabrication efficiency offered by our 3D printing method for origami structures with enhanced load bearing capacity and selective deformation modes.”

Many 3D printed structures with unique properties have been inspired by origami, opening up applications in soft robotics and self-folding structures. While most origami structures mean thin sheets being joined together with binding elements like glue, the research team found a way to make several 3D assemblies in one step, without needing to connect smaller parts together. The team, led by Zeang Zhao, developed a new polymer and used geometrical design to move towards using origami for engineering structures.

To build the origami, the team developed a novel new elastomer, which makes it possible for the structure to be created from a single component. The elastic polymer material can be 3D printed at room temperature and set with UV light, which forms a soft, foldable material that can be stretched up to 100%. This material was used for the whole 3D assembly. DLP 3D printing was used to build structures, made up of various combinations of individual units of origami, without requiring any extra assembly steps.

By altering how each origami unit is connected, the structures can be designed to have different load-bearing capabilities: vitally important for applications in engineering. One of the test structures was even able to support a load that weighed 100 times more than the structure itself did. But here’s the really interesting part – just by rearranging the same individual units in a different way, the team was able to build a bridge that, under the same heavy load, would fold flat.

The structures were designed with thick panels, which were separated by hinges not unlike the creases in a piece of paper. The hinges made it possible for the angle between the panels to vary between 0° and 90°. Hinge thickness is important for a structure’s mechanical properties: if it’s too thick, it won’t fold well, while if it’s too thin, it might not be able to support the structure’s weight. In addition, the researchers made sure that the high strain and stress the structures experienced during folding was localized specifically to the hinges, so the panels would not end up deformed.

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

[Source: Physics World]

Chinese scientists conduct ceramic 3D printing tests for off-world construction

Scientists at the Technology and Engineering Center for Space Utilization of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) have successfully completed an experiment to 3D print ceramic parts containing lunar dust under microgravity. Using Digital Light Processing (DLP) technology on board the Airbus ZERO-G parabolic flight aircraft run by Novespace of Switzerland. The 3D printing experiment further explores […]