Interview with Xioneer CEO Andrei Neboian at the TCT Show

Xioneer impressed me with its multiple material bays that let one pre-dry filament inside the printer. In this way, one could condition the filament on the machine itself and prepare it for 3D printing. With hygroscopic filaments such as PLA performance is significantly retarded and the material becomes brittle making it difficult to print. Polyamide materials (PA, Nylon) are even worse and suck up water like a starving man in the desert. These filaments may in a day or two to exposure to ambient air become less than performance ready. Polyamides such as PA 6 and PA 12 are industry standards and are great performance polymers for a lot of applications. By drying on the machine itself Xioneer shows us that they’re thinking about performance in an intelligent way. The machine has slick software and the parts on display were impressive as well. The company has cartridges for materials exchangeable nozzles for fine, bold and abrasive materials. A patented heating system and a full scan to ensure build platform calibration are other interesting features. Enough of a reason to interview CEO Andrei Neboian about the company and their printer.

What is Xioneer?

The company was founded in 2012 and has around 20 employees working at our headquarters in Vienna, Austria. Our main investor is the German company Fischer, well known for the Fischertechnik sets and its products for the construction industry.

What does your company hope to achieve?

We want to help companies to achieve more with 3D-printing. We do that by caring for every detail and by constant innovation and merging that into great 3D-printing systems. Our FFF-systems are flexible, reliable and accessible and provide great value to the customer – letting them do more with 3D-printing than before.

What makes your systems different than other 3D printers?

It’s the combination of technical innovations and smaller improvements in details that make our products stand out. Our systems are more flexible (e.g. with the different swappable nozzle-units), easier to use (e.g. automatic material management and automated calibration), and provide the benefits of high-end AM systems (e.g. material drying, heated build environment, water-cooled nozzles).

Who are your target customers?

We target various industries such as automotive, aerospace, medical and tooling manufacturers who want to create functional parts from industrial materials quickly and efficiently.

For what types of parts and applications is your system ideally suited?

Our swappable nozzle-units and materials cover a wide range of applications. Ranging from large fixtures and mounts printed within record time from PC or ABS, to carbon-fiber reinforced jigs, or small intricate parts with thin walls printed with flexible Nylon or TPU.

What makes the Xioneer desktop better than other desktop systems?

Over 6 patented technologies are used in our desktop system as well as in our industrial system. These provide state-of-the-art topographic calibration system for the nozzles and for the build-surface as well as the unique material feeding system which is the easiest to use on the market.

What kind of motion system is on it?

A derivative of the Core-XY system adopted to the needs of 3D-printing by our engineers.

How accurate is it?

The positional accuracy is within the range of 5 micrometers or lower.

What is Gecko Peel and what does it do?

GeckoPeel is our support material which is flexible and easy to remove from the surface of the model. It makes support removal much safer and quicker and other materials.

How does your automatic calibration work?

It scans the entire surface of the build table and compensates any unevenness automatically during the print. Unavoidable deformations caused by e.g. the high temperature of the print surface and the build chamber are compensated automatically. This allows using the entire build-surface and saves costly setup time.

You have “plug and play” proprietary filament but can I also use my own?

We provide a range of materials which we have tested internally. But we also understand that different customers and industries have their specific material needs. Therefore, we offer an on-demand service to certify customer materials through our internal material testing process.

How much is the X1?

List price for the Starter Set is under 15000€

And the X1s?

List price for the Starter Set is under 25000€

It seems to have a lot of spool holders in it?

These are the additional pre-dry units to prepare more material cartridges for printing. This saves time in busy environments where you need additional spools of material ready for your next print-job immediately.

PA CF is really being adopted much more widely, how come?

It’s a great material which combines the strength of Nylon with the stiffness that the fiber-reinforcement gives to your parts.

So why do you have four different nozzles and what do they do?

Our quick-changeable nozzles offer you more flexibility to do things beyond a standard filament printer can do. The nozzle-unit BOLD lets you print parts in lower resolution much quicker than any other nozzle: large bulky parts are made in just a few hours instead of days! The nozzle-unit HARD is made of a wear resistant ceramic material which allows printing fiber-reinforced materials such as PA-CF. The nozzle-unit FINE lets you create intricate parts in the level of detail which is usually expected from high-resolution 3D-printing technologies. The nozzle unit STANDARD is our all-rounder covering all other print-jobs. The additional benefit of our patented twin-head system is the ability to combine different nozzles within a single job: print the inside of your part with a BOLD nozzle, while preserving the high quality of the outer shell with the STANDARD nozzle – this will save you hours!

What is your modelPlus material?

It’s a modelling material with similar mechanical properties to ABS, and a great surface finish. It’s highly recommended for printing visual prototypes.

Why should I buy one of your machines and not one from another company?

The Xioneer X1s provides the latest technology for producing functional parts from a variety of industrial plastics. It’s a high value product with a quick return on investment, and a money-back guarantee. On top of that, we provide application support to our customers to get the best out of their X1s.