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Voxel8 Lands New CEO to Lead Multi-Material 3D Printing

After its co-founder, Harvard professor Jennifer Lewis, moved to a supervisory role, Voxel8 has found a new CEO. Friedrich von Gottberg will lead the Boston startup as President and CEO. 

Uppers 3D-printed by Voxel8’s Active Lab solution.

Voxel8 first made a splash at CES in 2015 with a desktop electronics 3D printer, dubbed the Developer’s Kit, capable of both printing plastic and depositing conductive inks. The company wowed attendees with the ability to 3D print a complete, functioning quad copter that could fly right off the print bed. 

The printer was meant to aid Voxel8 in discovering a killer app for the multi-material printing technology being developed in the lab of Jennifer Lewis. The lab has been involved in research that has included lightweight composites, stretchable sensors, solar panels and organic matter. Much of these achievements are dependent on a unique pneumatic printhead that lays at the heart of Voxel8’s printing process. 

Between then and now, the startup sold its desktop electronics 3D printer to the likes of Google ATAP, worked with such partners as the MITRE Corporation, and took on investors that included the CIA, via In-Q-Tel. In the process, the company switched gears, discontinuing the Developer’s Kit and launching the Active Lab, which deploys the material dispensing technology to 3D print plastic onto fabric, along with an inkjet head that provides a full range of color. The killer app, Voxel8 hopes, is athletic wear, specifically shoe uppers. To drive these efforts, the startup received funding from DSM and HP Tech Ventures, as well as existing investors ARCH Venture Partners and Braemar Energy Ventures.

Along the way, Jennifer Lewis shifted from her CEO role to an advisory position so that she could focus on her work at Harvard. Meanwhile, her co-founder, Travis Busbee, took over as CEO as the firm looked for Lewis’s replacement. 

Friedrich von Gottberg, President & CEO at Voxel8, Inc.

Prior to joining Voxel8, von Gottberg was with Cabot Corporation, where worked for 20 years. His last positions at Cabot were as senior vice president and president of Purification Solutions, before which he served as vice president and general manager of New Business Segments, as well as vice president and global director of R&D. Cabot is a large, publicly traded chemicals company known for its work with carbon and aerogel, among other materials. While its environmental record has not always been so hot (though it has made progress on this front), it manufactures activated carbon, used to remove pollutants from water, air and more.

The chemical company also makes elastomeric composites, colorants, and inks, fumed metal oxides and other materials, meaning that von Gottberg’s experience with these chemistries, along with his contacts in the industry, will serve Voxel8 in its mission to deliver mass production multi-material 3D printing. Meanwhile, Travis Busbee will return to his position as Chief Technology Officer. 

The post Voxel8 Lands New CEO to Lead Multi-Material 3D Printing appeared first on 3DPrint.com | The Voice of 3D Printing / Additive Manufacturing.

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Submit your multi-material print models for E3D’s ToolChanger design competition

Award winning British OEM E3D Online is running a design competition for its ToolChanger technology. Makers are encouraged to submit STL design models to demonstrate the multi-material capabilities of the E3D’s ToolChanger technology. The winning models will be printed by E3D at upcoming trade shows, including the Midwest RepRap Festival (MRRF) 2019 and Rapid + […]
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Strengths of Three Materials Combine to Form Composite 3D Printed Components

In a paper entitled “On the 3D printing of recycled ABS, PLA and HIPS thermoplastics for structural applications,” a group of researchers discusses multi-material 3D printing for structural applications. The materials they use are recycled ABS, PLA and HIPS to create composite parts. The point was to combine the materials so that the final component benefited from the respective strengths of each material.

“ABS is amorphous in nature and having high impact resistance,” the researchers state. “Low thermal conductivity, heat resistance and toughness, bio-degradability and bio-compatibilities are the key advantages of PLA, whereas HIPS is a low strength structural polymer which have better machinability and fabrication characteristics with low cost.”

The researchers 3D printed the sample components, which had four layers of each material. Testing was then performed on the components, including MFI characterization, differential scanning calorimetric (DSC) analysis, tensile testing, Lee’s disc thermal conductivity measurement, flexural testing and pull out testing. ABS, PLA and HIPS were found, through DSC testing, to be compatible with each other, all of them having similar ranges of integral heat value.

“As the practical application requires the requirement for maximum strength with minimum elongation, HIPS was having most desired elongation and PLA was having most desired tensile strength values,” the researchers continue. “After 3D printing of multi-material component, it was observed that tensile strength and elongation values of all multi-material printed components were observed intermediate to the HIPS and ABS which shows the usefulness of present study.”

Several conclusions were made from the study, as stated by the researchers:

  • In tensile testing, the Young’s modulus of multi-material component (325 MPa) was observed higher at experiment number 3, than single thermoplastic (Young’s modulus of PLA 47.9 MPa, ABS of 175 MPa and for HIPS 112.5 MPa).

  • Pull out testing revealed the fact that elongation and strength properties of 3D printing can be controlled through multi-material printing at predicted input processing setting. It was noted that break elongation of multi-material components was observed smaller as compared to ABS and PLA. At the same time, break load and break strength has been observed greater than HIPS in case of pull out tests.

  • 3D printing of multi-material components at predicted settings resulted in the observation that flexural strength was attained higher than HIPS (2.01 MPa) material as 2.96 MPa but lower than PLA (9.07 MPA) and ABS (7.04 MPa).

  • It was noted that PLA was having thermal conductivity of 0.2225 W/m.K, ABS of 0.1722W/m.K and HIPS of 0.3232W/m.K. For structural applications, it requires the thermal conductivity to be desired minimum. Multi-material printing of these materials resulted in thermal conductivity of 0.2732W/m.K (dt/dT = 0.814 K/s) which was lesser than HIPS material shows the utility of multi-material 3D printing.

Overall, the three materials were compatible with each other, and their strengths worked together to create composite components that were superior to single-material components. With the growing sophistication of 3D printers, and the greater accessibility of printers with multimaterial capabilities, it is becoming easier to 3D print composite components like these for functional applications that benefit from the best characteristics of ABS, PLA and HIPS.

Authors of the paper include Ranvijay Kumar, Rupinder Singh and Ilenia Farina.

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3D Print with Five Materials with New Prusa Upgrade, Plus More New Features

One of the reasons that Prusa has so many fans is that it is constantly working to improve and update its products. One especially popular upgrade in the past couple of years was the multi-material upgrade for the Prusa i3 MK2 3D printer. According to a customer survey, more than 73% of respondents would recommend the multi-material upgrade to friends or relatives, but as Prusa founder Josef Prusa says in a blog, the company wanted to improve the feature further and so redesigned the unit completely, making it simpler and more efficient. They also added an automated filament-cutting blade and physical buttons for manual controls.

The new hardware also features a direct drive, a single extruder motor, and print recovery – and it can print with five materials, instead of four.

“What we have here is a one-of-a-kind multi-material printing addon that is fully integrated with the printer, so everything is perfectly synchronized and the whole thing works seamlessly as a single unit,” Prusa says. “It’s just like printing on the standard MK3 – slice the model, export the G-Code, put it on an SD card and you can start printing right away without any hassle.”

The Multi-Material Upgrade 2.0 can be ordered for $299, with shipping anticipated in November.

New firmware 3.4.0 for the Original Prusa i3 MK3 and MK2.5 has also been released. One of the biggest new features for the MK3 is a filament sensor, allowing for auto-loading, stuck filament detection or pausing the print when material runs out.

“Now, the part of the software responsible for analyzing the filament flow has been completely rewritten to improve the precision and reliability of the sensor,” Prusa says. “It means that the sensor can recognize filament runout with greater accuracy and the number of false detections drops significantly. In the past, MK3 and MK2.5 printers shared the same values for the evaluation process, which sometimes led to incorrect results. Firmware 3.4.0 fixes this issue.”

Another improved feature for the MK3 is more reliable power panic/blackout protection. In addition, users can now choose from four beeper options: loud, for failure and user input notifications; once, which is the same as loud but beeps are played only once; silent, which is only error notifications, and mute, which is completely silent, no matter how serious the error is.

“To decrease the load on the printer’s CPU, we have introduced further optimizations for feedrate and acceleration values,” Prusa adds. “Up until now, the feedrate and acc values were compared to hardcoded limits with every movement throughout the entire print. In the new firmware, the checks for G-codes M201 and M203 are performed only at the beginning of the print. If the input values are smaller than hardcoded values, no action is triggered. In case the values from G-code are greater, the firmware replaces them with the default (hardcoded) ones.”

M-84 G-code is also available. The code can write or read a pin on the mainboard, which can be used to trigger a camera’s shutter so that users can create timelapses of their prints.

Several minor tweaks and bug fixes have been made to the new firmware as well, and you can read about it in more detail here.

Prusa will be in attendance at World Maker Faire, which is taking place in New York on September 22nd and 23rd.

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[Images: Prusa]

 

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Mosaic Manufacturing Introduces the New and Improved Palette 2 for Multi-Color, Multi-Material 3D Printing

In 2015, Mosaic Manufacturing launched the Palette, a device that allowed any 3D printer to become a multi-color, multi-material machine. It functioned by combining up to four filament strands in one extruder. Later, the company would upgrade the device to the Palette+, which has been getting positive reviews from customers. Now Mosaic Manufacturing is introducing the Palette 2, a more deeply integrated, user-friendly version of its well-known device.

The Palette 2, like its predecessors, works with single-extruder 3D printers to create multi-color, multi-material prints. What sets the Palette 2 apart is that it integrates and communicates directly with the user’s 3D printer. It can still be added on to the 3D printer as an accessory, but its integrated mode makes it feel like a native part of the system, according to Mosaic Manufacturing. All the user has to do is hit print to create multi-color or multi-material parts, as easily as they would create single-material parts.

The Palette 2 is compatible with nearly all filament-based 3D printers on the market by connecting a USB cable and a filament feed tube. Mosaic Manufacturing compares its integration capabilities with those of the Intel Inside model, and the company has already formed partnerships with multiple companies including Dremel 3D, MakerGear, Raise 3D and Robo 3D to integrate Palette 2 into the next generation of their 3D printers.

Other improvements to the Palette 2 include better print calibration and a more reliable printing experience, thanks to the device’s direct communication with the 3D printer. It’s more portable than its predecessors, too – it occupies less desk space, comes with a stand, and can be mounted to a wall or printer. It can also be transferred easily between printers. Installation is extremely easy, requiring no physical modifications to the 3D printer itself.

The Palette 2 has a continuous printing feature that automatically detects when one filament runs out and splices another to the end of the first one. It also features a full color touch screen so that users can customize prints directly from the Palette 2. Mosaic Manufacturing will be releasing a professional version of the Palette 2 called the Palette 2 Pro, which will operate 20% faster and come with a longer warranty.

Pre-orders for the Palette 2 start at $499 ($599 MSRP), which is far less expensive than the original Palette, which retailed for $999, and the Palette+, which cost $799.

The Palette 2 Pro

In addition to the Palette 2, Mosaic Manufacturing is launching a cloud platform called CANVAS. Software for multi-material, multi-color 3D printing systems was lagging behind the hardware, the company points out, so Mosaic developed CANVAS, a simple, browser-based slicer designed for multi-material 3D printing. Its features include version control for print settings, data-driven settings optimizations, and will soon allow users to “paint” or colorize 3D printable files in an intuitive and simple way.

CANVAS promises to streamline workflow, decrease processing times, decrease or even remove transition material, organize files, and increase the quality of 3D prints over time. The software is free and can be used for single-material 3D printing as well as multi-material.

Mosaic Manufacturing was founded in 2014, and the Palette 2 has been in the works since 2016.

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[Images: Mosaic Manufacturing]