3D Printing News Briefs: July 7, 2017

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Happy July! We’ve got a lot of news for you today in this week’s only edition of 3D Printing News Briefs, covering everything from 3D printers and hackathons to business and politics, so get ready. Sculpteo is now offering HP’s Multi Jet Fusion technology, while ARRK has installed a 3D Systems printer and NVBOTS is exporting its NVPro to customers in Asia. ZMorph released a new toolhead for its Multitool 3D printer, and the Youth for Technology Foundation is hosting a hackathon in Africa. Bobst is using 3D printing in its new digital print subsidiary, a New York congresswoman made a visit to Norsk’s Plattsburgh facility, and America’s First Lady Melania Trump received a 3D printed gift in Poland.

Sculpteo Offering HP Multi Jet Fusion Technology

Sculpteo has been chosen as one of HP Inc.‘s first French partners to work with its innovative Multi Jet Fusion 3D printing technology, which can be used to print prototypes and finished products in small to medium batches. The technology will allow Sculpteo to 3D print plastic parts for its customers up to 10 times faster than with other technologies.

Hilmiyati Kusnadi wrote in a Sculpteo blog post, “One of the major innovations of this process is that it needs less heat to fuse the material. As a result, the cooling time is faster than with the SLS technology. Moreover, the building box can be removed from the 3D printer, so it can cool outside of the printer, and another production batch can be launched right away.”

Currently, the process is only available for use at Sculpteo with HP-developed Solid Black Plastic material, created from a polyamide powder and featuring a high impact resistance and elasticity. The low-cost material, a solid choice for beginners and professionals, offers precision and abrasion resistance, is UV and light stabilized, and is resistant to many chemicals, such as hydrocarbons and ketones. Sculpteo says that more 3D printing materials for the Multi Jet Fusion technology will be introduced soon.

ARRK Installs 3D Systems 3D Printer at Gloucester Prototyping Center

ARRK Europe, part of industrial product development firm ARRK Group, has installed an advanced ProX 800 SLA 3D printer by 3D Systems in its Gloucester Prototyping Center; this news follows a previous investment in the Center when it opened a new, dedicated Metrology room earlier this year.

“It has been well documented that the demand for 3D Printed components for Prototype or Low Volume Production use is expected to grow significantly in the future. Our centre in Gloucester has a long and well established history in this field, providing some of the world’s leading companies with components as part of their product development programmes. As one of the early pioneers in Rapid Prototyping, Additive Manufacturing, or as people like to call it today – 3D Printing, this addition combined with other investments we are making globally, ensure that we are well placed to support our customers’ needs in the future,” said Craig Vickers, ARRK’s head of Prototyping and 3D Printing Operations in Europe. “This new machine will allow us to build larger, more complex SLA parts more accurately and in shorter timescales. In the last 12 months or so, we have also invested heavily in our Prototyping operations in Gloucester, but also in our facility in France, near Annecy, where we installed three ProX800 as well.”

NVBOTS Sending NVPro 3D Printer to Asia

Daiwa Steel employees in training program leveraging NVPro and NVCloud solutions.

Boston-based New Valence Robotics (NVBOTS) announced this week that it has started to export its automated NVPro 3D printer to customers in Asia, including Daiwa Steel Tube Industries Company in Japan. The company is the only provider of automated Built to Share 3D printing solutions, and the NVPro, designed by MIT engineers to deliver high reliability, offers the industry’s first automated part ejection. The company’s Asian customers are interested in the NVPro for precisely this feature, along with its integration with NVCloud software. This allows companies to manage all of their NVCloud-connected 3D printers from anywhere in the world.

AJ Perez, the chairman and co-founder of NVBOTS, said, “Exporting our products to Asia is a big win for NVBOTS. Our Industry 4.0 enabled 3D printing solutions are a great fit for industrial companies like Daiwa Steel, enabling them to manage their additive manufacturing portfolio easily and from anywhere, creating greater economies of scale with distributed implementations.”

ZMorph Releases New Multitool 3D Printer Toolhead

Multitool 3D printer manufacturer ZMorph just released a new toolhead, the interchangeable Laser PRO, which is compatible with all ZMorph multitool 3D printer models. The Laser PRO is twice as fast and 50% more powerful than the previous model, but safer to use, due to an aluminum protective tube that encloses the laser beam. It has a 2.8W blue laser diode, and is able to cut and engrave in materials ranging from adhesive foils and acrylic glass to various types of of wood, felt, and leather; in addition, the Laser PRO toolhead can manufacture working PCBs. The toolhead is lighter and more compact than its predecessor, thanks to its new electronics and CNC-cut aluminum body with built-in cooling system, which also make it easier to mount.

ZMorph’s multitool 3D printers come with Voxelizer software, which have workflows dedicated to each toolhead; the Laser PRO’s workflows include engraving, cutting, and image etching. The new Laser PRO toolhead is available online, and through a worldwide chain of authorized ZMorph resellers, for $499. The toolhead can be purchased separately, and in ZMorph 2.0 SX Full and Custom sets.

Hackathon Event Hosted in Africa by Youth For Technology Foundation

The Youth for Technology Foundation (YTF), which announced plans in September to train 6,000 Nigerian girls in technology, is hosting a hackathon event in the Anambra state of Nigeria next week. The event is called Hack for Good, and will be held at the Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu University in Uli. 25 participants from multiple fields will compete in the design and prototype challenge, with a theme of “Connect, Collaborate, Create for Good,” by developing usable prototypes that could solve real-world problems in their own communities, in the areas of agriculture, education, health, payments, and security. According to event organizers, the goal is “to develop the world’s next best innovation, transforming the continent from ‘Aid to Africa’ to ‘Made in Africa’.”

In addition to giving participants the chance to win prizes and get access to 3D printing hardware and software and industry experts, the hackathon, which takes place July 13th through the 15th, serves another purpose as well: shifting the attention of the tech community from the city-state of Lagos, which has become the poster community of new technology in Nigeria, and onto Anambra.

New Bobst Digital Print Subsidiary Uses 3D Printing in Cluster Technology

A couple months ago, Bobst and inkjet technology developer Radex formed a joint venture called Mouvent, which had its official launch in Switzerland this week. Mouvent is dedicated to digital printing, and is Bobst’s first move into the textile and label printing space. Mouvent also announced its first three printers, the LB701-UV and LB702-UV single-pass inkjet machines for labels, and the Mouvent TX801 multi-pass printer for textiles. Two additional textile printers will be released over the next year. The printers are based on Radex-developed Mouvent Cluster technology: the clusters, which are 3D printed in-house, can power machines that run up to 100m/minute, and each one has four layers – electronics, ink supply, mechanical, and printhead. Clusters are then combined to form a scalable Mouvent Matrix.

Piero Pierantozzi, the co-founder of Radex who is now heading up Mouvent, said, “This is the next generation. I think we are within the first that comes with 1,200dpi heads, so it’s faster, higher quality and we believe we have reached a very high integration level. Everything is integrated, we have no connectors, all the connectors are printed and they come out in one piece. So the number of parts is drastically reduced.

“The beauty [with Radex] was no customers, no daily business, just 100% focused on that, we had nothing else in mind and the outcome is the cluster. We started with traditional manufacturing, metal, and then wanted to do some prototypes and in the end decided to fully produce it 3D, which really opened up new ways.”

Norsk Titanium Hosts New York Congresswoman 

Recently, Norsk Titanium, which uses its proprietary Rapid Plasma Deposition (RPD) process to 3D print titanium components on an industrial scale, hosted Representative Elise Stefanik (R-NY-21) at its Plattsburgh, New York plant, which is located in the congresswoman’s district. The company, which is the world’s first FAA-approved supplier of aerospace-grade 3D printed structural titanium components, discussed its new business plans with Rep. Stefanik, and announced that it is fulfilling its plans to expand production and adding 100 jobs by the end of 2017 to meet growing product demand.

Rep. Stefanik said, “This visit was an important opportunity to see the amazing work being done by Norsk Titanium in Plattsburgh. Plattsburgh continues to emerge as a major manufacturing and economic hub from our region, and Norsk is an excellent example of a cutting edge firm expanding their business and creating good paying jobs for North Country families. In Congress, I was pleased to recently work on a legislative initiative that will help 3D printing firms like Norsk, and I will continue to work on initiatives to develop a work force that can meet the needs of our high-tech employers. I thank President Warren Boley and all Norsk employees for the tour today.”

Melania Trump Receives 3D Printed Gift in Poland

US President Donald Trump is currently on his second international trip, and First Lady Melania joined him in Germany and Slovenia, but their first presidential stop was in Poland. After greeting President Andrzej Duda and his wife Agata Kornhauser-Duda, the First Lady visited the Copernicus Science Center with Kornhauser-Duda. The two spent some time talking and playing with children who were visiting the museum, and one of them gave First Lady Melania a very sweet 3D printed gift – a hot pink stiletto shoe, which, while unfortunately several sizes too small, was a very nice gesture.

Discuss these stories in the News Briefs forum at 3DPB.com.

 

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