News and Insights of 3D Printing and Manufacturing
Sigma Labs, Inc. (NASDAQ: SGLB), a provider of quality assurance software under the PrintRite3D brand, announced that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has issued a Notice of Allowance for U.S. Patent Application No. 15/276,452, “Optical Manufacturing Process Sensing and Status Indication System.”
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.
California-based 3D printing company Airwolf 3D has released the latest 3D printer in its EVO series, the EVO R. Made in the United States, the new 3D printer was developed with dependability, safety and efficiency in mind and is being marketed to the engineering, design and primarily education segments.
Israel-based Nano Dimension is taking its electronics 3D printing technology to the next level with the launch of the new DragonFly Lights-Out Digital Manufacturing (LDM) system. The industrial 3D printing system builds on the company’s established PCB 3D printing process, adding increased automation for 24/7 lights-out digital manufacturing. The new system is expected to unlock opportunities for low-volume manufacturing of multilayer PCBs, capacitors, coils, sensors, antennas and more.
EV truck manufacturers are emerging as leading innovators in manufacturing. After Quantron used VJET X technology to produce an engine housing, Nikola Corporation has now invested in a large-format FFF additive manufacturing system, the BigRep PRO, to streamline the design and manufacturing processes of their zero-emission battery-electric and hydrogen fuel-cell electric vehicles, electric vehicle drivetrains, vehicle components, energy storage systems, and hydrogen station infrastructure.
BOSTON, MA (USA) – GE (NYSE: GE), the world’s leading digital industrial company, today announced plans to acquire two suppliers of additive manufacturing equipment, Arcam AB and SLM Solutions Group AG for $1.4 billion. Both companies will report into David Joyce, President & CEO of GE Aviation. Joyce will lead the growth of these businesses in the additive manufacturing equipment and services industry. In addition, he will lead the integration effort and the GE Store initiative to drive additive manufacturing applications across GE. “Additive manufacturing is a key part of GE’s evolution into a digital industrial company. We are creating a more productive world with our innovative world-class machines, materials and software. We are poised to not only benefit from this movement as a customer, but spearhead it as a leading supplier,” said Jeff Immelt, Chairman and CEO of GE. “Additive manufacturing will drive new levels of productivity for GE, our customers, including a wide array of additive manufacturing customers, and for the industrial world.” GE expects to grow the new additive business to $1 billion by 2020 at attractive returns and also expects $3-5 billion of product cost-out across the company over the next ten years.
News have been circulating about a patent that inventor David J Findley filed for Lockheed Martin for a diamond 3D printer capable of creating diamond objects in any shape. Does this mean we are soon going to be 3D printing diamonds? The short answer is probably not, however the patent is definitely real and – while it does open up the perspective of creating artificial diamonds in any shape and geometry – it is actually quite similar to current – albeit still mostly experimental – technologies to 3D print objects using high performance ceramics and zirconia, such as the ones from Lithoz, 3DCeram and Prodways. Not to mention that, since diamonds are notoriously difficult to cut (i.e. shape subtractively), being able to shape them additively would make plenty of sense.
Some believe that the future of 3D printing is in continuous composites, especially the continuous fiber ones, and many have come to believe that the future of extrusion (both thermal and pneumatic) is in robotic arms. Then there are those who see both of these futures as one. Some of them work on the hardware Stratasys and others, like Vynce Paradise, Vice President Manufacturing Engineering Solutions at Siemens PLM Software, work on implementation. We caught up with Mr. Vynce Paradise at last week’s TCT and he had quite a lot of interesting details to reveal on Stratasys‘ plan to 3D print wing-size continuous composite parts through robotic arm thermal extrusion technology.
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