News and Insights of 3D Printing and Manufacturing
Hexcel Corporation has been approved by Boeing to produce HexPEKK-100 aerospace structures for major commercial aircraft platforms, leveraging its proprietary HexAM additive manufacturing process.
Lithoz, the Austrian leader in 3D printed ceramics, is not a company known for its aggressive marketing and communication efforts. Its high-level LCM ceramics photopolymerization AM technology is making huge steps forward, however, we don’t often hear about it. That’s, well, because the company does not tell many people about its progress. Even after Lithoz launched the disruptive, production-ready Cerafab S65, we only learned about its progress in the market when a small Australian company – 3rdAxis – purchased one.
Food waste is a growing issue, with estimates suggesting that nearly one-third of all food produced is scrapped. In the UK, for instance, which has a population of about 66 million, eight million tonnes of food are wasted a year. Like most environmental problems, a significant part of the food waste is caused at an industrial level, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t things that consumers can do on an individual basis to help reduce, reuse and recycle.
In 2019, Russian Helicopters Holding Company (part of Rostec) revealed – via a press release published by Modern Ghana – that it is planning to re-engineer approximately 30 different helicopter parts to be manufactured using 3D printing technology and integrate them to serial production starting from 2020.
Ascent Aerospace, a leading provider of aerospace tooling systems, factory automation and integration solutions, acquired a Large Scale Additive Manufacturing (LSAM) machine from Thermwood Corporation, a technology leader and manufacturer of CNC and 3D printing equipment based in Dale, Indiana.
America Makes is preparing to open its third Satellite Center, which will be based at Wichita State University’s (WSU) National Institute for Aviation Research (NIAR) in Kansas. An MoU was recently signed by America Makes and WSU-NIAR, through which the new center was agreed upon.
Last month, Desktop Metal announced it was ready to ship its Studio System across Europe, to customers in France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Portugal, Spain, the Netherlands and the UK. In its latest update, the company revealed its first customers in the UK. The University of Sheffield and global engineering solutions company Weir Group have become the first two UK-based organizations to adopt Desktop Metal’s metal 3D printing platform, the Studio System. Tri-Tech 3D, a platinum reseller partner of Desktop Metal, was responsible for and facilitated both sales.
Metal AM company Sintavia, LLC announced its acquisition of QC Laboratories, Inc., a Florida-based non-destructive testing (NDT) services company. The acquisition will enable Sintavia to expand and advance its NDT capabilities for commercial aerospace applications, especially for surface finish conformance testing.
A series of recently approved codes by the American Medical Association (AMA) will help to push the adoption and use of 3D printing for clinical applications and healthcare. The new codes—consisting of four current procedural terminology (CPT) category III reimbursement codes, came into effect on July 1.
The fourth edition of the 3D Pioneers Challenge came to a close this past June, after the contest’s expert jury selected the winning submissions from a pool of 36 finalists. Winners from each of the challenge’s eight main categories were presented with their prizes (worth over € 40,000) at Rapid.Tech + FabCon 3D.