New Certified Material Developer Program to Expand Desktop 3D Printing Options — A Few Questions For: NVBOTS

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New Valence Robotics (NVBOTS) defines its mission as making 3D printing “as easy as printing on paper.” While easy and advanced are often seen as mutually exclusive, that’s not always the case, and it’s certainly not the case with NVBOTS, which is responsible for cutting-edge technology such as the fully automated NVPro, which features the first automated part ejection in the industry. Last year, the company launched NVLABS, a new division dedicated to the development of high-speed, multi-metal 3D printing, but NVBOTS’ interest in materials development encompasses more than just metals.

Today, NVBOTS announced the launch of the Certified Material Developer Program, which is aimed at polymer, material and chemistry companies that are interested in developing and testing new 3D printing materials. Using the NVPro, members of the program will be able to test and verify any plastic or composite material, with help from NVLABS. Any material with melting temperatures up to 500ºC can be tested, giving members a huge range of options that they can work with.

So far, in preliminary testing, the NVPro has shown itself to be capable of 3D printing with a wide variety of materials, including ABS, polycarbonate, ULTEM 1010, Carbon Fiber ULTEM, PEEK, Carbon Fiber ABS, TPU, and an assortment of metals.

The Certified Material Developer program is limited to the first 50 qualified applicants, and has already attracted several participants.

“We are excited at MakeShaper to be part of the NVBOTS Material Developer Program and provide certified 3D printing materials for continuous 3D printing on NVBOTS supported devices,” said Bryan Bonacum, Vice President of Sales at MakeShaper. “With over 30 years of manufacturing expertise, we look forward to providing NVBOTS’ customers with the highest quality materials to give proven and repeatable results.”

The NVPro not only shook up the 3D printer market with its automated part removal, which users have called “a game-changer,” it also gave users the ability to 3D print from the cloud, at any time and from any place. It allows for the creation of a continuously operating 3D printer farm in multi-user environments, making rapid iteration of material testing and certification easy.

“The NVPro is perfectly suited for materials development because of the printing throughput during the calibration and verification phases,” said Forest Sears, Materials Engineer at NVBOTS. “24/7 3D printing paired with unique 3D print IDs mean customers have more freedom with design of experiments compared to any other 3D printing solution. For example, a three-level, five variable, full factorial test is 243 printed parts without replicates — you can only effectively manage that many parts on an NVPro. The NVBOTS Certified Material Program reflects the collaborative history of 3D printing and pushes the NVPro towards its goal of printing any material anywhere in the world.”

Experts from NVLABS will offer support to members of the program by helping them to configure and enable the NVPro to test any plastic or composite material they want to verify. 3DPrint.com had the opportunity to learn more, as we had A Few Questions For AJ Perez, Co-Founder and Chairman of NVBOTS.

Where did the idea for the program come from? 

AJ Perez

“Real businesses want to use real materials from trusted brands. NVBOTS recognized that end users of 3D printers want to by materials from trusted name-brand material companies. The Material Developer Program enables NVBOTS’ customers to work with their preferred vendors while maintaining the ease of use and automation capabilities of the NVBOTS ecosystem.”

With the current limitation to 50 participants, do you expect to extend/add a similar program in the future? 

“For the near term, the NVBOTS certified Material Developer Program is limited to the first 50 material companies we partner with, but we fully expect over time that this number will expand to allow our end users free choice of certified material providers. The goal of this program is to create a certified material market place for our customers so that they have access to the 3D printing materials that matter for their bottom line. Given the unique capabilities of the NVBOTS solution, the material opportunities are significant. The vision of this program is to enable our enterprise customers to mass produce any part, in any material, at anytime, from anywhere in the world.”

If a company wants to participate, what do they need to do/who should they contact? 

“The easiest thing is to visit https://hubs.ly/H07SQsn0 and submit the short application. Once we receive your application to join the Material Developer Program, our team will contact you to schedule an initial screening interview and to provide additional details on the terms of the program.”

What is your hope for the near-term future of this program?

“The short term goals of this program are to enable our material partners to certify their materials four our existing customers. This includes high performance materials (Ultem, PEEK, PPSU etc.), polymer composites (carbon fiber, fiber glass etc.), and metals (Aluminum, Titanium, Stainless steel etc.).”

Longer-term?

“The long term vision of this initiative is to create a marketplace of certified materials and trusted suppliers of high-quality 3D printing materials. The goal is to reduce the friction, in terms of technical difficulty and cost, so that our customers can use 3D printing on the factory floor for mass production.”

Discuss in the NVBOTS forum at 3DPB.com.

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