3D Printing News Briefs: April 24, 2019

We’re starting out with some business news today, and then moving on to education, before highlighting a heartwarming story with a 3D printing element. First, CRP Technology is adding a new Windform material to its range, while the Lighting Research Center has established a consortium for 3D printed lighting. Moving on, Wohlers, Airbus, and ZAL will soon conduct a DfAM course together. Finally, a Reddit user made a wheelchair – with some 3D printed parts – for a friend’s dog.

CRP Technology Launches New Windform Material Family

Italian company CRP Technology, part of the larger CRP Group, is well-known for its Windform polyamide composite materials. Now, it’s launched a new line in the professional 3D printing materials family: Windform P-LINE, for high-speed, production-grade 3D printing with HSS (High Speed Sintering). The first PA material in the line is Windform P1, which has excellent mechanical properties and potential for use in the automotive, consumer, electrical, and household goods industries. Windform P1 parts can have isotropic qualities, with flexibility, full density, and engineered for rapid, high volume production of small end-use parts at lower cost and high surface resolution.

CRP Technology’s VP and CTO Franco Cevolini said, “P stands for Production. We created this new range of materials for High Speed Sintering, the new 3D printing process we integrated in-house: Windform ® P-LINE materials combined with HSS technology, allows for the manufacturing of small 3D printed production components.

“Our aim is to constantly creating technological breakthroughs. We invest in Research and Development as well as new technology: with Windform ® P-LINE, we want to provide even more tangible, turnkey solutions which can satisfy any customers’ requirements.”

3D Printed Lighting Consortium

3D printing of an LED lighting fixture prototype at the Lighting Research Center laboratory in Troy, New York.

The leading center for lighting research and education, the Lighting Research Center (LRC) at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in New York, has decided to build upon the progress it made during a recent 3D printing workshop and recently established the Additive Manufacturing for Lighting Consortium in order to continue exploring the use of AM for lighting. The consortium, which had its first meeting earlier this month, is made up of lighting, material, and 3D printer manufacturers, and is working to build up collaboration in the lighting industry so it can adopt additive manufacturing for the fabrication of high-quality products. Objectives for the consortium’s first year include education, collaboration on pilot research projects, and market assessment. so that the group can really understand what both industries need, in addition to determining the present status and future possibilities of the AM industry’s capabilities in regards to the lighting industry. In the long term, the consortium hopes to build a center of excellence for solutions and best practices when it comes to 3D printing lighting systems.

Nadarajah Narendran, Ph.D., the LRC’s Director of Research, said, “In the future, we hope that the consortium will provide market intelligence, technology guidance, and standards representation, among other competency-building activities, which will enable companies to address this transformation proactively. Together with the consortium members, the LRC is leading the transformation of the lighting industry to the digital era by preparing the two industries for the changes ahead.”

Wohlers DfAM Course Going to Germany

In cooperation with both Airbus and the ZAL Center of Applied Aeronautical Research, Colorado-based Wohlers Associates is taking its course on design for additive manufacturing (DfAM) to Hamburg this summer. The company has named DfAM as one of the main barriers for companies looking to adopt 3D printing, and the course, hosted by ZAL and led by Wohlers Associates’ instructor and DfAM expert Dr. Olaf Diegel, will cover such topics as using topology optimization to consolidate many parts into one, how to minimize post-processing by reducing the use of costly support material, and will also include DfAM and best practices guidelines. Participants will be able to get hands-on experience designing and 3D printing industrial parts, in addition to taking a tour of the ZAL TechCenter.

“We are excited to be the first to host this course in Germany. Wohlers Associates represents a reputation and caliber that is among the highest in AM and DfAM. We expect the response from German companies to be substantial,” said Dr. Thorsten Scharowsky, Senior Development Manager of Additive Manufacturing at ZAL.

The course will take place June 13-14th. For more details, visit the Wohlers Associates website.

Dog Wheelchair with 3D Printed Parts

Reddit user LuciferLOL666 wins for this month’s most heartwarming 3D printing story. He wanted to help his friend’s disabled dog and decided to make it a little wheelchair. While some of the parts for the wheelchair were 3D printed on his Fortus 900 FDM 3D printer, it only cost him $20 on Amazon to purchase the rest. He posted an adorable video to Reddit showing the dog’s “priceless” reaction to his new wheelchair, and then went a step further – he offered to 3D print the parts free of charge, and provide wheelchair assembly instructions, for any interested Reddit users who also had disabled dogs. LuciferLOL666 only expected “like maybe a dozen or so people” to see his offer, but it turned out to be a whole lot more than that, ending up on the front page of the site! He originally told people who offered to help him to instead “please take a bag of food to your local shelter” or help a stray or loose pet if it’s wandering around. While I’m sure this still stands, the post began spreading like wildfire and he ended up having to seek 3D printing assistance.

“This got way more attention than I anticipated and I have hundreds of requests,” he wrote. “I have reached out to several industrial 3d printing services to see if they can volunteer some machine time and material and I will be reaching out to people that volunteered to crowdsource their machines to help production as well. I am currently separating all the requests from help offers and may take a little bit since I have about 3000 messages. I am redoing some of the parts to make them print with less model and support material. I also reached out to the original creator, Erica Charbonneau @rickee to see if she would like to team up for this and she has offered to help as well.”

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