BASF Forward AM & Xuberance Invest in Farsoon’s HT403P 3D Printer for China AMTC

Recently, BASF’s 3D printing division Forward AM and 3D printing design and service company Xuberance collaborated to open a new Additive Manufacturing Technology Center (AMTC) in China. The new AMTC, located in Shanghai’s Lingang Science and Technology City technical hub, will act as a separate 3D printing hub, offering the combined expertise of both Xuberance and Forward AM in order to offer high-performance AM services to customers in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region, including engineering materials innovation, 3D design, technical services, and application solutions. There are over twenty 3D printers on site at the AMTC, covering a wide variety of the industry’s major technologies, and Forward AM has also decided to invest in the HT403P printer from Farsoon Technologies, bringing it to the AMTC floor as well.

“The establishment of the new AMTC in Shanghai marks an important step for us, as we are now able to offer customers in Asia-Pacific a perfectly integrated service – from consultancy, through our high-performance materials, to direct component printing and great design services for successful 3D printing,” François Minec, Managing Director BASF 3D Printing Solutions, said at the grand opening of the AMTC. “We are confident the AMTC will become a key hub for Additive Manufacturing in this region, strengthening our capability to co-innovate with our customers.”

Farsoon, a global manufacturer of advanced polymer and metal laser sintering systems, is China’s leading supplier of industrial-scale 3D printers, announcing that it had installed 3D printers at over 500 customer sites as of June 2021. The company has long worked with both Xuberance and BASF, partnering with the latter in 2014 to produce direct components on its own 3D printers for design and innovation projects. Xuberance was founded in 2008 by Steven Ma in Vienna, and is focused on mass customization of 3D digital data creations by integrating 3D printing and digital design. In 2015, Farsoon began a long-term R&D collaboration with BASF that was centered around developing high-temperature materials for laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) 3D printing; this materials partnership was commercialized in 2018.

Now, by investing in its industrial, high temperature-capable HT403P system, which features an eight-zone heater, enhanced temperature shielding, and intelligent thermal control systems, Forward AM has decided to strengthen its relationship with Farsoon. The BASF AMTC is now planning a number of projects—supporting industry customers with application- and material-specific 3D printing solutions—that will leverage both the open-platform printer and BASF’s high-performance materials.

During the fast approaching RAPID + TCT 2021 event, which will be held in Chicago from September 13-15, Farsoon Americas will be displaying several industrial parts that have been 3D printed using BASF Ultrasint powders at its Booth #7222.