Link3D Launches Additive Material Recommendation System to Speed Up 3D Printing Workflow

The Link3D Material Recommendation System includes a database of 1,000+ materials across over 500 3D Printers.

New York City-based Link3D, which offers an additive manufacturing execution system (AMES) to help customers connect the digital world to their 3D printing workflow and production planning. Today, the company launched its new Additive Material Recommendation System (AMRS), which will also help when it comes to enhancing 3D printing workflow software.

Companies are always looking to lower overhead costs, and one way to do that is by optimizing human capital and financial resources to get parts to market more quickly. Link3D helps these organizations to streamline their 3D printing supply chains, starting with order submission and auto-quoting, production planning and scheduling, all the way to quality inspection.

Link3D created AMRS to help make material selection easier for engineers during order submission.

“One of the major recurrent hurdles we’re hearing from our customers is how to accelerate the adoption of additive manufacturing within their own organization. We are thrilled that Link3D is introducing an additive manufacturing recommendation system that will not only help engineers achieve their design goals, but also increase overall understanding of the additive manufacturing capabilities and workflows,” said Renaud Vasseur, VP of Business Development & Sales at Link3D.

Material Recommendation System for Polymer Materials

AMRS helps, as Link3D put it, “close the gap” when it comes to understand performance across over 1,000 materials and 500+ 3D printers. It’s an intelligent recommendation system that helps engineers who are new to 3D printing choose the material that best fits their needs, based on quantitative and qualitative production specifications, with the help of an intuitive filtering system.

AMRS is integrated within Link3D’s industrial 3D printing workflow solution in order to make the material selection process easier. Engineers who already know a little about 3D printing materials can also access technical data more quickly without needing to review material manufacturer’s spec sheets manually. This helps them design and produce more economical, functional, and higher quality 3D printed products. Users can also stay up-to-date with available technologies across both their supplier network and their home facility, which helps the overall process become more streamlined and efficient.

Material selections can be narrowed on AMRS by choosing to filter certain characteristics and properties, such as:

• Material characteristics for polymers and metals: biocompatible, durable, corrosion resistant, hardness options, colors, etc.
• Technical material properties: material density and hardness, tensile strength (Mpa) and modulus (Gpa), elongation at break (%)
• Material manufacturers: Additive Industries, Carbon, Concept Laser, EOS, HP, Renishaw, Stratasys, Trumpf, etc.

In order to reach mass adoption in major industries, 3D printing processes need to be simplified, and intelligent recommendation systems, such as Link3D’s new AMRS, can help with this in terms of speeding up design and production cycles. For many parts and especially industrial processes, material qualities and their uses are well understood. For many 3D Printing applications a company may only ever use one material or very few materials indeed. Especially in an industrial setting materials will have to be well undersood and will often be limited. For those who are in more of an exploratory phase this may well be a useful tool.

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[Images: Link3D]