BASF’s 3D printing arm Forward AM, and materials and systems manufacturer Photocentric have launched a joint portfolio of polymers called ‘Ultracur3D Powered by Photocentric.’ Developed as part of an ongoing strategic partnership between Photocentric and Forward AM, the new resins are custom-engineered to work with Photocentric’s LCD systems. The initial line of ten visible light […]
BASF subsidiary Forward AM extends 3D printing partnership with Prismlab
Global chemical production company BASF’s 3D printing arm Forward AM, has reached an agreement to strengthen its partnership with 3D printing process and hardware provider Prismlab. The deal, signed at Prismlab’s Shanghai base, will see some of its 3D printing photopolymer products integrated into Forward AM’s Ultracur3D photopolymer portfolio. Closer cooperation with Prismlab not only […]
3D Printing News Briefs: October 18, 2019
The stories we’re sharing in today’s 3D Printing News Briefs run the gamut from materials to new printers. Altair has launched its new industrial design solution, and Remet opened a metal 3D printing lab in Poland. Innofil3D is sharing lots of material news, and Equispheres has released the test results for a unique 3D printing powder. Finally, Hackaday published a micro 3D printer project.
Altair Launches New Industrial Design and Rendering Solution
The “Geko Ring Collection,” jewelry by Luca Palmini, designed and rendered with Inspire Studio. Image courtesy of Luca Palmini.
Global technology company Altair has launched Inspire Studio, its new 3D design and rendering solution, to help architects, designers, and digital artists create, evaluate, and visualize designs. The solution builds on the functions of Altair Evolve, and includes 3D rendering and animation software Inspire Render, which helps users rapidly generate photorealistic product renderings and animations. Both Inspire Studio and Inspire Render run on MacOS and Windows, and help designers open up their creativity to go beyond traditional CAID tools. The solutions will be introduced next month during a one-day launch event in Italy, and you can also get a free ticket to formnext 2019, where you can learn more about Inspire Studio and Inspire Render at Altair’s booth E11, hall 11.1.
“We are very pleased with these two new solutions for the global industrial design community. Inspire Studio builds on our previous industrial design tool, Evolve, while going beyond Evolve’s capabilities. Inspire Studio will enhance designers’ creativity by letting them drive their designs. It offers an intuitive user interface and a powerful construction history, allowing them to quickly create and explore multiple iterations of their design. Relying on the same modern user experience with powerful interactive, full progressive and raytracing rendering engine, Inspire Render will help designers quickly run photorealistic renderings and walkthrough animations on GPUs and CPUs,” said James Dagg, CTO at Altair.
3D Design and Rendering Software | Altair Inspire Studio
Remet Opens Modern Metal 3D Printing Laboratory
Polish steel structures manufacturer for the oil and gs mining industry, Remet, has launched a metal 3D printing laboratory equipped with a range of high quality machines and devices. The first of these is the DMP Flex 350 by 3D Systems, followed by 3D Systems’ Figure 4, the office-friendly metallic powder atomizer ATO Lab, and plenty of other specialized research equipment. Remet completed the project together with 3D Lab, a top Polish industrial 3D printer distributor and manufacturer of the ATO Lab.
The ATO Lab metal atomizer, which enables testing and fabrication of many powdered metal alloys, was the starting point for this unique laboratory. A new branch of the enterprise, called Remet Metal Labs, is where the company will work on comprehensive additive manufacturing and industrial applications projects. Its goal is to create highly flexible conditions for creating prototypes in the powder production field, and automotive, aviation, and space industry customers are invited to work with Remet to take advantage of the lab. 3D Lab and Remet will present their solutions together at formnext in Frankfurt next month.
Innofil3D Materials and Design Rules Video
This week, Innofil3D, and its parent company BASF, have a lot of news to share. First up, Ultrafuse BVOH, its water-soluble support filament, is now available for purchase, along with its new Ultrafuse 316L metal filament. Designed for easy FFF 3D printing, this is the company’s first metal material – 80% stainless steel with a 20% polymer content.
For users interested in 3D printing their Innofil3D PRO1 filament on a Raise3D printer, you can now join the Raise3D Open Filament Program to take advantage of optimized settings and print profiles. This new program is a collaboration between Raise3D and filament manufacturers, like Innofil3D, to find the top-performing materials for its 3D printers. Finally, Innofil3D has released its second video tutorial for design rules and principles of FFF 3D printing. Check out the video below, and be sure to visit BASF at its large K-Fair exhibit in Hall 5, C21/D21.
Equispheres Releases Test Results for Unique AM Powder
Materials science technology company Equispheres has released the results from its first powder testing phase, completed by a facility that certifies AM materials for applications in aerospace and defense. The results have confirmed that the powder has exceeded expectations, allowing for a 20-30% increase in mechanical performance and a 50% increase in production speeds. In light of this news, Equispheres is launching new equity financing in order to, as the company wrote in a press release, “grow and unlock the vast potential of Additive Manufacturing.”
“The unique properties of our powder, including the high sphericity, narrow particle size distribution and low surface area results in significantly increased packing density. This allows an increase of powder layer thickness by a factor of 2 which significantly increases build speed. Most importantly, this boost to build speed does not come with a mechanical performance penalty. Instead, the uniform nature of our powder ensures that parts are produced with reliable and consistent mechanical properties. The minimal variance in our performance results provides design engineers the statistical confidence to produce stronger, lighter parts,” said Equispheres’ CTO, Dr Martin Conlon.
Hackaday Project: Micro Deltesian 3D Printer
A new Hackaday project by architect Ekaggrat Singh Kalsi was just published – a micro Deltesian 3D printer, which he says offers a quality that’s on par with any Cartesian 3D printer. The printer has a solid aluminum frame, with a standard slider Y axis and a Delta mechanism for the XZ axis. A 3.5″ LCD touchscreen, with a built-in SD card, is fast and easy enough for his young daughter to use, which was his ultimate goal. With an 80 x 100 x 85 mm build volume and a print bed held in place with magnets, the biggest challenge in making the minuscule 3D printer easy to use was the filament loading; Singh Kalsi used a lever-based latch mechanism for this.
“the micro deltesian was born out of the curiosity of building the convoluted deltesian mechanism,” he explained. “Later on it evolved into the idea of building a 3d printer simple enough to be used by my daughter. The deltesian mechanism seem very wierd when i first saw it but eventually i thought maybe i should give it a try and hence this printer was born.”
Watch the video below to see just how easily his daughter uses the micro Deltesian 3D printer:
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Innofil3D Releases Two New Ultrafuse 3D Printing Filaments: Ultrafuse Z PCTG & Ultrafuse TPU 80A LF
Netherlands filament maker Innofil3D has just announced the launch of two new filaments:
Ultrafuse Z PCTG – as the first electrostatic discharge (ESD) safe filament produced by BASF, this all-purpose material is affordable, non-marring, offers ease in printing and finishing, and is strong enough for lightly loaded fixtures, meant to outpace other materials like polyethylene terephthalate glycol-modified (PETG).
New ESD safe filament: Ultrafuse Z PCTG
“It shows very smooth surface properties, which help to prevent latent failures in electronics,” states the Innofil3D team in their latest press release.
Ultrafuse Z PCTG is also powered by Essentium, a materials development partner that has been partnering with BASF for a couple of years now in developing more advanced materials and platforms.
This filament is meant for use in applications like:
- Handheld tools
- Electronic fixtures
- Robotics
- Automation components
- Explosion-proof environment parts
Ultrafuse TPU 80A LF – if you are looking for a flexible filament, explore this material further to print on multiple types of platforms. Ultrafuse TPU 80A LF is meant to offer versatility as a filament for direct drive extruders, but it also works for bowden extruders (where weight is reduced from the printhead by attaching the extruder to the printer body at the tradeoff of having to push filament through a tube which is generally problematic for flexible materials). Innofil3D states that there is no other filament to match the printability users will experience with this material, including other features like abrasion and chemical resistance.
This filament is suitable for applications like:
- Vibration absorbers
- Grips, clamps
- Bumpers
- Seals, suction cups, plugs
New TPU filament that works in bowden type extruders: Ultrafuse TPU 80A LF
This material will join the Ultrafuse series by Innofil3D, which already includes Ultrafuse PA and Ultrafuse TPU 85A, known respectively for their unique mechanical qualities and ability to work in a broader temperature range, and uses for FFF 3D printing with BASF´s Elastollan® materials.
Innofil3D has kept the momentum going through the years in offering users a wide variety of filaments. Their team’s mission is to keep surpassing the expectations of their customer base, while taking FDM 3D printing to the next level–as they continue to strive to make the perfect filament. Innofil3D states that all their materials and products are ‘one hundred percent traceable to the source,’ arriving to the factory in raw pellets where they are carefully dried before processing and use.
We have followed Innofil3D’s progress as they have partnered with other industry leaders in 3D printing, were acquired by BASF for further expansion of materials development, and even made a foray into filaments made suitable for racing. Find out more about Innfofil3D here.
What do you think of this 3D printing news? Let us know your thoughts! Join the discussion of this and other 3D printing topics at 3DPrintBoard.com.
[Source / Images: Innofil3D]
3D Printing News Briefs: November 13, 2018
We should really call today’s 3D Printing News Briefs the formnext 2018 Briefs, as announcements from the show are numerous this week. EnvisionTEC, XYZprinting, BASF, and DSM all introduced new 3D printing materials at the event in Frankfurt today, and in the only news not related to formnext, Imerys Ceramics has announced a new range of ceramic feedstocks.
EnvisionTEC Debuting First 4K 3D Printing System
At formnext, 3D printer manufacturer EnvisionTEC debuted the industry’s first DLP-based 3D printer that uses a true 4K projector with UV optics tuned to the 385 nm wavelength. Available in three production-ready variations, with a gray body and a 2560 x 1600 pixel projector resolution, the Perfactory P4K 3D printer delivers highly accurate parts with an ultra-smooth surface finish. Additionally, the Perfactory P4K, has access to the rest of the Perfactory line’s versatile materials portfolio for production capacity.
“The P4K is the highest resolution advanced DLP printer with the largest build envelope and deploys artificial intelligence in pixel modulation to deliver the highest accuracy parts with the smoothest available surface finish in the 3D printing space. This will deliver the next level of production-grade 3D printing solutions,” said Al Siblani, the CEO of EnvisionTEC.
The new Perfactory P4K will be on display at formnext all week.
XYZprinting Introducing New 3D Printing Materials
Another company introducing new materials at formnext this week is desktop 3D printing brand XYZprinting. In order to expand the capabilities of both domestic and professional grade 3D printers, the company is launching a new antibacterial PLA material, along with copper metallic PLA and Carbon PLA materials. The first of these can destroy up to 99% of bacteria, including E. coli and Staphylococcus aureus, and comes in four colors: white, red, yellow and neon green.
The copper metallic PLA, made of 65% copper powder, is a good alternative for hobbyists when it comes to sculpting metal for ornamental models. The material is being launched in conjunction with XYZprinting’s new nozzle, made of carbon hardened steel. Finally, the new Carbon PLA, which is also compatible with this new nozzle, is made of 10% carbon fiber, and its matte finish is ideal for showing off fine details. You can learn more about these new materials at XYZprinting’s booth D10 in Hall 3.1, where it will also be exhibiting its latest 3D printer, the da Vinci Color AiO, with a 3D scanner and optional laser engraver.
BASF 3D Printing Solutions Presents New Products at formnext
Germany-based BASF 3D Printing Solutions GmbH (B3DPS), a 100% subsidiary of BASF New Business GmbH, is also at formnext this week, to introduce several new materials for photopolymer and laser sintering methods, in addition to announcing some new partnerships and alliances. First, B3DPS is introducing flame-resistant Ultrasint Polyamide PA6 Black FR, Ultrasint PA6 Black LM X085, which is suitable for most current SLS 3D printers, and Ultrasint PP, a polypropylene with great plasticity, low moisture uptake, and resistance to liquids and gases. Additionally, B3DPS has also grouped its photopolymer materials under the new Ultracur3D brand name.
András Marton, Senior Business Development Manager at B3DPS, said, “Our Ultracur3D portfolio enables us to offer customers various UV-curable materials for 3D printing that provide far better mechanical properties and higher long-term stability than most available materials.
“These materials have been developed for functional components that are subject to high stress.”
The subsidiary also announced that it’s partnering with California company Origin and 3D printer manufacturer Photocentric to develop photopolymers and photopolymer 3D printing processes, and working with Chinese 3D printer manufacturer Xunshi Technology, which operates in the US under the name SprintRay, to open up new applications for the Ultracur3D range. Additionally, B3DPS subsidiary Innofil3D is partnering with Jet-Mate Technology in China and US-based M. Holland to distribute plastic filaments. Visit B3DPS at formnext this week at booth F20 in Hall 3.1.
DSM Announces 3D Printing Product Launches
Vent cover used for PIV windtunnel testing, printed in Somos PerFORM Reflect
In today’s final formnext news, science-based company DSM has unveiled two new high-performance materials for 3D printing structural parts. Somos PerFORM Reflect is a groundbreaking new stereolithography material for wind tunnel testing with PIV (Particle Imaging Velocimetry), and saves more than 30% post treatment cost by eliminating the need to apply PIV coatings to printed parts. In addition to helping customers conduct iterations and collect data more quickly, the resin could actually help break speed records for wind tunnel testing.
“Speed is crucial, whether in automotive, aerospace or other transportation design. Eliminating the need to apply PIV coatings is a major breakthrough for customers who are using PIV wind tunnel testing. It allows them to speed up their aerodynamic design optimizations. We are thrilled that our strategy of focusing on helping customers create their applications have enabled us to deliver such tremendous value. Overnight, Somos® PerFORM Reflect will not just set new speed records but new industry standards,” said Hugo da Silva, Vice President of Additive Manufacturing at DSM.
The company’s second new material is the thermoplastic copolyester (TPC) Arnitel ID2060 HT, which is perfect for the FDM 3D printing of structural parts for automotive applications. The material features a balance of prolonged high temperature resistance, flexibility, and chemical resistance against exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) condensate.
Imerys Ceramics Introduces EZ Print 3D Range of Ceramic Feedstocks
As part of the Imerys group, Imerys Ceramics designs, produces, and markets high-performance mineral solutions for the ceramic industries, and is making ceramic 3D printing easy with its new, unique range of ceramic materials called EZ Print 3D.
EZ Print 3D is available as a plug & play cartridge, so users can enjoy efficiency and ease of use when it comes to 3D printing. The materials are also available as a “ready to fill” ceramic feedstock, and have been tested on several 3D printers currently on the market. EZ Print 3D has a low firing temperature of 1220°C that’s compatible with most kiln temperature limits, and the genuine low porosity (<0,5%) of a porcelain. The technology is perfect for tableware and giftware applications, and the company plans to expand EZ Print 3D accordingly as 3D printing adoption grows. Imerys Ceramics also provides technical support and a dedicated team that’s competent in 3D printing to help customers.
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