Zortrax, the leading Polish original equipment manufacturer (OEM) of additive manufacturing (AM) solutions, announced the launch of the company’s latest platform, the Inkspire 2 UV LCD photopolymer printer. Additionally, Zortrax is launching two post-processing machines alongside the Inkspire 2: the Zortrax Cleaning Station and Zortrax Curing Station.
The Inkspire 2 is compatible with a number of resins from leading materials manufacturers, including Henkel/Loctite and BASF Forward AM. Zortrax is touting that compatibility, as well as the emphasis that the company has placed on ensuring accuracy in the finishing phase, as attributes that make the Inkspire 2 perfectly suitable for industrial model production — a rarity for resin-based AM platforms, which are generally used solely for making prototypes.
In a press release announcing the Inkspire 2 and new post-processing systems, Zortrax’s CEO, Mariusz Babula, commented, “Bringing our system into your business, you can easily create your own manufacturing facility, equip your factory with high-quality, reliable, and professional machines that work for you, or combine them into farms. …[Our trio] is most powerful together, but each individual machine is a true game-changer in its own category.” Artur Chendoszko, Resin Technology Leader at Zortrax, explained, “…[We aimed at] creating an innovative resin 3D printer advanced enough to serve the most durable resins on the market. Similarly crucial for us was also delivering the highest quality across the entire platform and making the process as automated and clean as possible.”
Also in line with its intended use being for larger-scale applications, is the fact that the new machine is simply more powerful, across the board, than the original. The Inkspire 2’s UV light engine — developed entirely in-house by Zortrax — is seven times more powerful than the one on the Inkspire, supporting the new platform’s ability to handle build volumes up to four times larger.
At the same time, Zortrax claims that the Inkspire 2 has 40 percent more uniform UV light distribution than its predecessor, while also being even easier to use. Notably, Zortrax worked closely with resin manufacturers on the Inkspire 2 during the platform’s prototyping phase.
As the company notes in the press release, the Inkspire 2’s major practical advantage over existing resin-based platforms is that it can be deployed for producing usable industrial parts, rather than solely the prototypes for those parts. One of the biggest selling points of AM, of course, is that it allows the user to streamline the production workflow. Thus, it’s especially impressive that, here, Zortrax is streamlining two AM processes — prototyping on one machine, for models printed from another machine — into a task that can be completed on a single platform.
Finally, as I also mentioned last month in a post about another Polish 3D printing OEM, Sygnis, Poland seems uniquely poised, from a sheer geographical standpoint, to benefit from the ongoing re-shaping of global supply chains. For the same reason, the fact that Zortrax has a close relationship with German chemical giants Henkel and BASF puts the company in especially favorable position to see disproportionate gains from a global 3D printing scale-up. In that sense, the company’s focuses on compatibility with the right materials and post-processing are particularly wise. Zortrax has a good shot at making its customer base for its post-processing machines the entire market segment, rather than just existing users of Zortrax platforms.
Images courtesy of Zortrax