News and Insights of 3D Printing and Manufacturing
It is November 19th, 2019 and the fifth edition of Formnext is off to a promising start. 3dpbm’s team on the ground will be speaking with various industry partners and experts to learn about new technologies and releases as well as tracking this year’s Formnext trends. Playing a more omniscient role, I will be covering news from across the industry and compiling this year’s top stories here for you.
Royal DSM, Chromatic 3D Materials and German RepRap (GRR) have formed a partnership to develop high-performance, flexible solutions for 3D printing using Chromatic’s line of FlexTune polyurethane (PU) materials. Together, the companies will create PU-based 3D printed parts for the automotive, rail and footwear sectors, to name a few.
After acquiring a 30% stake in Italian metal AM service bureau BEAMIT, Swedish company Sandvik and its Italian partner are showcasing a combined metal powder and AM offering at Formnext. At their joint Sandvik-BEAMIT booth, the companies are displaying a range of Sandvik’s Osprey metal powders and customer use-cases, as well as introducing new nickel-based superalloys and titanium powders.
BigRep, the German large-scale 3D printing specialist, has brought a 3D printed “pod car” named LOCI to Formnext 2019. The autonomous electric car demonstrates the new BigRep Part DNA technology, which embeds NFC chips into 3D printed parts.
Invited by Outpie Partners, a Netherlands-based company that promotes and facilitates business relationships between China and Europe, we recently had the opportunity to tour many of China’s tech hubs, focusing mainly on AI, from Shenzhen to Hangzhou, and then further up the Chinese East Coast to Shanghai, Wuxi, Jinan, and Bejing. While it’s true that China’s manufacturing is currently focusing almost exclusively on the very large – and AM is not part of the big picture – 3D printing is growing as fast as everything else and we had the opportunity to see it first hand when we visited Latec, a metal 3D printer manufacturer based in Jinan.
Italian 3D printing company Lumi Industries is preparing to unveil a new desktop 3D printer at Formnext this week. The resin-based 3D printer, called Lumi³ (LumiCube), was built for easy and accurate additive production and integrates a slew of new features that provide better efficiency and quality.
Kumovis, a Munich-based developer of 3D printers founded in 2017 (which was a winner of the Formnext Start Up Challenge in 2018), will showcase its KUMOVIS R1 3D printer at this year’s Formnext conference. The machine is the “world’s first 3D printer with clean room integration” and can be used for on-the-spot production of medical devices.
Perhaps some consolidation may finally be taking place in the all-too-fragmented global AM industry as materials giant BASF has acquired Sculpteo, a pioneer in exploring the opportunities of on-demand part production via AM. BASF has been taking AM very seriously lately, incrementing the company’s exposure in the market with a series of new products and partnerships.
German DLP 3D printer manufacturer Rapid Shape has entered into a partnership with materials company Henkel in order to accelerate the mass production of 3D printed functional parts. As part of the agreement, Rapid Shape has become the latest member of Henkel’s open materials platform and will work to certify materials for its DLP 3D printing systems. Henkel, for its part, will integrate Rapid Shape’s technology into its AM ecosystem.
AREVO, a Silicon Valley company specializing in composite 3D printing, has enlisted AGC, Inc. as a strategic business partner in Japan. Through the collaboration, AGC will provide manufacturing-as-a-service (MaaS) to Japanese customers for the on-demand production of lightweight, 3D printed composite parts. The new service will leverage AREVO’s Aqua platform, an industrial continuous fiber 3D printing system with a build volume of up to one cubic meter.