Tag Archives: materials

3D Printing Iron: ExOne Announces New Metals for 3D Printing

ExOne IPO 3D Printing

ExOne Enables 3D Printing in Iron

The ExOne Company (NASDAQ:XONE), a global provider of 3D printing machines and printed products to industrial customers, announced that it added iron infiltrated with bronze as a new 3D printing material and has also increased its suite of binder solutions for its 3D printing process.

ExOne filed for IPO at the beginning of 2013.

ExOne’s strategy is to expand its direct metal printing capabilities to increase opportunities in the industrial marketplace. Iron is widely used in the manufacturing of machine tools, automotive parts and general support structures. Part of the reason for iron’s popularity as an industrial product is its cost effectiveness. Manufacturing iron-based products using ExOne’s 3D printing technology allows for the direct creation of more intricate products than traditional manufacturing processes, and creates a more cost effective alternative to current 3D printing materials such as stainless steel. ExOne believes that the addition of iron to its metal portfolio will be well received by customers in the traditional markets for iron. ExOne prioritized its development of iron infiltrated with bronze as a result of general customer interest and the breadth of the manufacturing market.

To further develop its reach into the molds and casting industry, ExOne has added phenolic and sodium silicate to its suite of binders for use in its 3D printing process. Phenolic binder, used with ceramic sand in the 3D printing of molds and cores, offers customers three benefits:

  1. Casting higher heat alloys,
  2. Creating a higher strength mold or core, and
  3. Improving the quality of the casting due to reduced expansion of the mold or core.

These capabilities address challenges faced by the automotive, aviation, hydraulic/heavy equipment and pump industries.

ExOne believes that sodium silicate binder will appeal to casting houses that are in search of cleaner environmental processes. It is further believed that the use of sodium silicate will reduce or eliminate the release of fumes and gas in the casting process, helping to reduce costs associated with air ventilation, and electrical and maintenance equipment.

Rick Lucas, ExOne’s Chief Technology Officer, commented, “We are excited to add iron infiltrated with bronze to our product offerings. We continue to focus on the development of our other metals and materials. We remain committed to releasing at least one new material every six months. Our priorities are defined by the needs of our current customers and as we uncover new opportunities with prospective customers.”

ExOne’s Material Applications Laboratory (ExMAL), currently has eleven other materials under various stages of development. ExOne has been focused on 3D printing for industrial customers since 2005.

About ExOne

ExOne is a global provider of 3D printing machines and printed products to industrial customers. ExOne’s business primarily consists of manufacturing and selling 3D printing machines and printing products to specification for its customers using its in‐house 3D printing machines. ExOne offers pre‐production collaboration and prints products through Production Service Centers, which are located in the United States, Germany and Japan. ExOne builds 3D printing machines at its facilities in the United States and Germany. ExOne also supplies the associated products, including consumables and replacement parts, and services, including training and technical support, necessary for purchasers of its machines to print products.

3D Printing Startup Mixee Labs Launches Customizable 3D Printed Cufflinks

Mixee Labs 3D Printed Cufflinks

Mixee Labs Launches 3D Printed Cufflinks

Mixee Labs is the 3D printing startup behind customizable figurine platform Mixee Me and a customizable jewelry platform launched in June. Mixee Labs’ products were featured as Time Magazine’s Top 10 3D Printed Gifts of the year in 2012.

Now Mixee Labs has a new product: 3D printed cufflinks.

Using Mixee Labs, anybody can design their own cufflinks. You can select from a variety of different designs or even upload your own black and white graphic. Want cufflinks of your favorite team logo or your initials? Mixee Lab’s custom cufflink creator is perfect for you.

Mixee Labs manufactures each product on demand using 3D printed stainless steel (with optional gold or bronze plating) for $60, 3D printed sterling silver for $160, and 3D printed nylon plastic for $20.

3D printing is not limited to plastics, and Mixee Labs is taking full advantage of the wide variety of materials with this product. Each stainless steel or plastic pair will take about 2 weeks to print and ship; each silver pair will take about 3 weeks to ship.

Here’s a photo gallery to show how the creation process works and showcases some final cufflink designs.

 

We sat down with Nancy Yi Liang, co-founder of Mixee Labs for an interview.

On 3D Printing: First figurines, then jewelry, now cufflinks. Seems like you are building a full catalog of 3D printed goods. Tell us more about your expansion strategy.

Nancy Yi Liang: Eventually, we want to be a destination for customized, rapidly manufactured products. The cufflinks are built with our modeler’s platform (not yet released). The idea is you can upload a base model STL, like a cufflink, and specify a given surface for the user to add embellishments via extruded text or graphics. Unlike the Javascript platform we launched a while back, this platform doesn’t require a designer to know how to code.

On 3D Printing: These cufflinks are in stainless steel, right? What have you learned about working with that material?

Nancy Yi Liang: Stainless Steel is a great material–it has a real vintage-looking, raw quality to it. Moreover, you can coat it with gold and bronze, giving it some polish. A big part of designing for Stainless Steel is understanding structural strength. There’s a part of the 3d printing process (called the “greenstate”) where the model is not yet infused with bronze, and is actually quite fragile. During this stage, any thin parts of the model that is not well supported can break. In general, designing for 3d printing is very much about understanding the production process. “3d printing” actually covers a wide variety of production techniques (laser sintering, powder binding layer by layer with glue, jets extruding molten plastic). Each material employes different techniques and thus have different design restrictions. Shapeways provides excellent guides on designing for each material (hehe.. patting myself on the back a little since I wrote that section back when I was at Shapeways).

On 3D Printing: What’s been the biggest surprise about 3D printing jewelry and accessories?

Nancy Yi Liang: You know, sometimes people just want to put their names on things. I originally designed this with the mindset that people will want to upload all sorts of fancy graphics. But when I asked my friends who wear cufflinks, a lot of them got very excited when I told them that they can put their initials on the product. So ok, we added a custom text field to the cufflink creator. Right now, we are just beginning to venture into this space, so I’m sure there’s a lot more surprises coming down the road–we just need to keep our eyes and ears sharp!

Go to Mixee Labs to create your own custom cufflinks or other 3D printed jewelry.

3D Printing Materials: From Plastic to Metal to Wood and Beyond

Shapeways 3D Printing Materials

3D Printing Materials: What You Can Make

This is a guest post by Kyle Hurst, whose bio is at the end of the article.

If you look up 3D printing on the internet you’re likely to run into a variety of objects ranging from decorative knick-knacks to full blown prototype models of new inventions. While there’s a lot of emphasis on all of the cool ideas that concept designers have come up with, there is relatively little hype about the development of the various materials and techniques being developed and that are now floating around in the 3D printing community. Here is quick look at the variety of different materials available on the market today.

Hard Plastics

This is the most common material and you can find it all over the internet, or even make your own out of garbage plastic using a home extrusion machine. “Hard” is usually a relative term and depends heavily on the number of layers in your model. Being the first and most prolific material it’s used for lots of different ideas from sculptures, to graphic design, to mechanical models. Sometimes they’re even used to make functional parts and tools.

Flexible Plastics

This is a very significant advancement in printing technology because it allows people to print objects with flexible parts in them to build composite structures. That means that printed items don’t have to be stiff, greatly broadening the variety of functional objects that can be effectively produced. Because it’s a lot more rubbery in consistency it’s very useful not only for making flexible objects, but for any number of practical applications such as shoe soles, handgrips, or grips on the undersides of objects to prevent them from sliding around.

Metals

Selective Laser Sintering has been around for decades, but it hasn’t ever been put to this type of use, and it definitely hasn’t been affordable for a private person. The incorporation of laser sintering into 3D printing allows people to build much more durable and heavy objects. While that means producing machine parts that typically have to be cast or ground by machine tools, it could also be applied to make less glamorous everyday objects like a hammer, or a screwdriver.

Chocolate

While some people were out chasing the dream of home manufacturing, others got a bit more creative. Considering that at the end of the day we’re using a robot to dab droplets of sticky things strategically into predetermined shapes, it was only a matter of time before someone thought to use chocolate. Perhaps in the future we won’t be so lazy as to buy a box of chocolate hearts for valentines day, but instead design and customize chocolate sculptures as gifts? The idea might be a bit too romantic, but at least it’s tasty.

Wood Composite

Designed to appeal on aesthetically as well as economically, a German company found a way to create printable wood. It’s made of wood fibers and a lignin based polymer that behaves similarly to plastic. Depending on temperature it will print with different colors, allowing for the addition of artificial “tree-rings” in printed items. The material looks and feels essentially like wood, but more important is that it’s actually made of wood and natural ingredients. That means that we don’t need to rely on artificial non-renewable plastics for 3d printing purposes.

3D printing is becoming increasingly ready to make the jump from fun design toy to essential home-manufacturing tool. If we’re lucky then in 10 years we’ll be sitting in our homes with our own 3D printers building many of the items that we buy at the store today.

 

About the author: Kyle Hurst has a background in 3D modeling and B2B marketing. He’s currently pursuing his education further and writing about 3D plastic printing in his free time.

Have something to say? Submit your own guest post to On 3D Printing!

 

Shapeways Materials Sample Kit photo by Shapeways used under Creative Commons license.

i.Materialise Launches 3D Printing Design Challenge for Ceramics

i.Materialise 3D Printing Ceramics Challenge

3D Printing Design Ceramics Challenge from i.Materialise

3D printing marketplace i.Materialise has launched its latest 3D printing design challenge. This challenge asks for innovative ideas for ceramics.

Running April 8 to May 23, 2013, the competition asks entrants to submit a design on i.Materialise and the winner will get a free 3D print of their design.

Here are more details about the i.Materialise 3D Printing Ceramics Challenge.

Spring is finally entering our doors  and we are in desperate need for more colors in our lives! So we’re ready to launch our first ceramics challenge where you can choose between nine vibrant colors. Are you ready?

THE CHALLENGE
For this competition, your challenge is to use 3D printing to create a product in ceramics. We give you carte blanche, so you can design anything you want: from tiles to vases, from jewelry to kitchen ware.

Surprise us by your creativity!

PRIZES
On the 23th of May the jury will select 1 winning design. The winner will receive his or her 3D print.

WHO CAN ENTER
This challenge is open to all designers, professional and amateur, regardless of sex, age or nationality.

CHALLENGE PERIOD
Submissions will be accepted up to 23:59 May 23th Central European Time, 2013.

HOW TO PARTICIPATE
There is no limit on the number of entries per contestant. To enter, you need to upload your design(s) here and provide a clear explanation (under ‘desciption’) in at least 50 words.

JURY
The i.materialise team will vote upon the entries.

MATERIAL & BOUNDING BOX
Participants need to upload their file here. You can find more information about the file formats in our FAQs under ‘website’. The material for this challenge is ceramics.

There are limits on the size of the design:

Bounding box ceramics: 15 cm x 15 cm x 15 cm

 

i.Materialise is also hosting an Accessories Challenge, looking for accessories that are inspired by birds.

Video: 3D Printing Gives UK-Based Collcap Packaging Competitive Edge

Collcap Packaging 3D Printing

Collcap Packaging in the UK is using revolutionary 3D printing technology to prototype cosmetics packaging for their many international perfumery and cosmetics suppliers. Using the Stratasys Objet30 Pro 3D printer, Collcap’s designers are able to turn 3D CAD designs into accurate prototypes using a choice of 7 different materials ranging from blue, gray, white and black to clear transparency, high temperature resistance and polypropylene-like.

The transparent material (Objet VeroClear) is particularly useful in simulating glass and PMMA. 3D printing allows Collcap to place precise transparent replicas in the hands of their customers only a few short hours after their initial design. Once the chosen 3D printed models are approved the designs are sent to glass cutting and then final manufacturing.