3D Printing News Unpeeled: Arkema Pebax, Voxeljet, Urban Reef, Xtree, CSAIL

Arkema is offering 3D printed parts from its castor oil bio-based Pebax Rnew elastomers from Erpro 3D Factory. This is a lightweight, energy return elastomeric material that is a block copolymers composite of harder polyamide blocks and soft polyether blocks. Now available from Erpro it will later be on Arkema´s EASY3D quoting platform. This leads us to the question, why doesn’t Arkema buy Erpro and just go into making parts? This material is sure to be of interest to shoe makers and could be a sustainable alternative to vat polymerization materials.

voxeljet has showcased an cold IOB (Inorganic Binding) binder jet technology for sand cores and casting. The process dispenses with the need of a large industrial microwave, reduces harmful emissions, may improve cycle times and may improve part quality.

The Urban Reef could be coming to a city near you. Pierre Oskam and Max Latour are developing a vision for 3D printed structures that are porous and engender life in the city. The structures could be interspersed with the city and contain nutrients to cause plants and other life to sprout.

XtreeE has added three new partners in Switzerland, the US and Japan bringing its total to 12 worldwide. I love this company’s go to market. They are developing software and simulation tools that should let people more quickly print safer structures while connecting them to the company forever and creating a global 3D printing service for concrete 3D printing.

MIT CSAIL has worked with Inkbit to develop  dense, interlocking-free and Scalable Spectral Packing (SSP) which optimizes the batch 3D printing non-interlocking parts at high densities. The team say that they’ve gone from 20% to 40% packing density. If this works it could increase ROI, throughput and profitability significantly.