Solvay selected as first materials leader to develop Stratasys-approved filament for high-performance F900 3D Printer

The collaboration between Stratasys and Solvay is designed to expand the range of high-performance polymers available to manufacturers, starting with the Stratasys F900

Stratasys has established an authorized materials partner program – designed to expand the range of high-performance polymers available to manufacturers leveraging Stratasys’ fused deposition modeling process using FDM Technology™ in 3D printing applications. As an initial step, advanced materials leader Solvay has been selected to help launch the program and deliver new polymers for the Stratasys F900™ 3D Printer.

For more than two decades, Stratasys has helped customers engineer durable, highly repeatable 3D printed parts for high-performance environments leveraging its advanced materials – including FDM® Nylon 12CF, FDM® TPU 92A, and Antero™ 800NA PEKK-based material. Under the authorized materials partner program, Solvay will access exclusive tools and Stratasys expertise to develop materials aligned with the company’s quality and performance benchmarks. The partners will share an authorized partner materials roadmap to guide Solvay’s selection and development of materials for Stratasys FDM printers.

“Stratasys is committed to expanding our portfolio of advanced, specialized materials for high performance FDM printers – enabling manufacturers to readily use 3D printing for production applications,” said Rich Garrity, President, Americas, for Stratasys. “By combining our expertise with Solvay, customers can make use of a broad range of high performance applications – all while maintaining the level of quality and reliability expected from Stratasys high-performance FDM consumables.”

“With this strategic partnership, we are combining Stratasys’ leadership in fused deposition modelling 3D printing with Solvay’s leadership in developing high-performance, AM-ready materials for the most demanding applications in a large number of industries,” said Christophe Schramm, Business Manager for Additive Manufacturing in Solvay’s Specialty Polymers Global Business Unit. “This is fully in line with Solvay’s ambition to push the limits of high-performance additive manufacturing.”

Stratasys is unveiling its collaboration agreement with Solvay at RAPID+TCT 2019 in the Cobo Center in Detroit, Michigan. Visitors can also learn more at the Stratasys booth (No. 1201). For more information on Stratasys’ advanced 3D printing solutions for high-performance environments, please visit F900™ 3D Printer site.

Stratasys spin outs come out of stealth mode

by Dr Bryony Core, Technology Analyst, IDTechEx

2018 has been the year of major new announcements at Stratasys. Not only have they announced that they are developing two new technologies, but they are doing so through the launch of two start-ups and are venturing into the lucrative metal 3D printing ecosystem in the process.

The first of these new companies is Evolve Additive, which started as a research focus area in the R&D labs of Stratasys. The decision to spin out two new companies from internal Stratasys research was based on the need for Stratasys to focus on its core business, and the need to obtain greater funding from external financing programs more freely, as explained by Evolve Additive CEO Steve Chillscyzn.

Nonetheless, Evolve Additive’s decade in development was time well spent, as the technology differs significantly from any other currently on the market. STEP, or Selective Toner Electrophotographic Process, utilises an electrostatically charged roller which selectively collects polymeric particles in the position appropriate for the individual build layer. The roller then deposits particles onto a conveyor belt and are then carried to the build platform. The roller and platform continually move back and forth until the build is complete. Evolve Additive claim that this process is at least an order of magnitude faster than binder jetting processes such as HP’s Multi Jet Fusion or Xaar’s High Speed Sintering. Although the process won’t be commercialized for another two years, IDTechEx Research expects to see more announcements as this company increases the capability of their printers.

The second company to emerge from Stratasys’ research and development is Vulcan Labs, whose team comprises some of the industry experts brought into the Stratasys fold following their acquisition of Harvest Technologies. Although as yet the technology remains a closely guarded secret, it is based on the established metal printing process, Powder Bed Fusion, and is reliant on a multi-laser sintering process. It remains to be seen how significantly this will differ from multi-laser DMLS printers already commercialised by EOS and Concept Laser.

With Stratasys entering 2018 following 3 consecutive years of negative sales growth, their investment in these two spin outs is a long-term method to securing future revenues by benefitting from exposure to the high growth markets of metal printing and production scale polymer printing. However, with established market leaders in both of these segments already facing competition from newer technologies, it remains to be seen whether this is a strategy that will pay off for Stratasys.

Learn more about 3D printing in the IDTechEx Research report 3D Printing 2018-2028: Technology and Market Analysis – visit www.IDTechEx.com/3d for more.

Additive Manufacturing has established itself in many industrial sectors as a method for making plastic parts. The 3D printing of metals is on the road to becoming a similar success story. In the newly opened 3D-Printing Lab for Metals and Structural Materials at the Fraunhofer Institute for High-Speed Dynamics, Ernst-Mach-Institut, EMI, researchers have investigated how resource- efficient the manufacturing process is when lightweight aluminum components are manufactured using additive methods. They discovered that even marginal reductions in the material and resources used per component yield high cost savings in series manufacturing.

The 3D-Printing Lab for Metals and Structural Materials at Fraunhofer EMI in Freiburg houses one of the largest commercially available 3D printers for metal currently in existence. In the research sector, an apparatus of this size is unique. Using the selective laser melting technique (see box “How SLM works”), metal structures with dimensions of up to 40 centimeters can be made by additive manufacturing. 3D printing offers completely new ways of designing components with highly complex shapes and optimizing their weight.

But it is only by combining Additive Manufacturing and intelligent lightweight design that you can maximize resource efficiency in manufacturing. Fraunhofer researchers in the 3D-Printing Lab have investigated just how economical the manufacturing process is in terms of resources, and whether material and operating costs can be minimized compared to conventional industrial methods. To do this, they took a practical, widespread component for their tests: a wheel carrier such as might be used in a lightweight vehicle. “We were able to quantify the effect lightweight construction – and specifically the use of structural optimization methods – has on the resources used in the SLM manufacturing process,” says Klaus Hoschke, scientist and group leader at Fraunhofer EMI. The focus was on energy and material consumption, the manufacturing time and the CO2 emissions that arise during the small-scale production of twelve wheel bearings.

Resource efficiency of a small manufacturing run
After the researchers had used the numerical finite element method (FEM) to simulate and analyze a draft design and determine the right geometric shape with structural optimization methods, they constructed the wheel bearing in an optimized lightweight design. The result was a wheel bearing designed for the defined load scenarios and offering maximum performance. Because of their geometric complexity, structures produced in this way cannot be manufactured by conventional methods such as milling or turning. “With the lighter model, we were able to save hugely on resources during production, as less material has to be produced per component. If you multiply this by the number of units in a small-scale run, then you require less time, material and energy for manufacturing. Reducing volume through the use of higher-strength materials offers the greatest potential for energy savings here,” says the researcher. Using the numerically optimized version of the wheel bearing, 15 percent less energy was required for the additive process than for the conventional method: Twelve kilowatt hours of electricity were needed for the conventional design, whereas only ten kilowatt hours were needed for the numerically optimized design. (In each case, the measured value refers to a series-manufactured component.) Manufacturing time was cut by 14 percent and CO2 emissions by 19 percent. And where material consumption was concerned, it could be significantly reduced by 28 percent.

Additive Manufacturing – the method of choice
Although structure-optimizing algorithms and numerical optimization simulations are already being employed in the 3D printing of components today, they are only used when the component must be extremely lightweight, such as aircraft parts designed to reduce fuel consumption during operation. Components that lack these implications as regards structural optimization are still generally manufactured using conventional industrial methods. The results of the small-scale series production of the wheel bearing suggest that additive manufacturing can also be useful when a component does not have to be structurally optimized as such. “A heat exchanger or a tool mold, for example, do not have to be lightweight to improve their functionality. Nevertheless, it makes sense to design them with reduced weight and volume when manufacturing them additively, because this way you can bring down manufacturing costs,” explains Hoschke.

Forecasts on what effect the Additive Manufacturing of metals will have on global production vary widely. But everyone agrees on one thing: for many industries – such as aerospace, automotive engineering, medical engineering and toolmaking – it is a game changer. “Our positive results for resource efficiency in the manufacturing process should reinforce this,” says the scientist. In the future, Hoschke and his team want to research the extent to which other design heights, series sizes and materials such as titanium affect the resource efficiency of the manufacturing process.