When additively manufacturing resin parts, it’s all about imparting energy into a polymer bed or filament, melting and fusing it into the desired shape. This requires post-processing, much like other kinds of conventional industrial 3D printing.
In the video above, we look at how a new system from Essentium, the FuseBox, combines the initial printing and post-processing steps for a significantly faster production cycle.
“What Essentium has done is reengineer the physics inside the 3D printer for the first time in 30 years,” said Blake Teipel, president and CTO of Essentium. “Our electric welding technology fuses individual layers together in the 3D printer, as the part is being built. There is no post-processing and no after-work. Once you pull it off the printer, it’s ready to go.”
Teipel explained that the system takes conventional monofilaments coated with a thin film layer of carbon nanotube composite and builds the part layer by layer like any other FDM printed part.
“We call this an enhanced FDM process, because our melt zone is 10 to 20 times the size of the melt zone in conventional FDM parts,” Teipel continued.
“Our embedded carbon nanotube composites heat up rapidly in the presence of the electric current, and that heating event causes those polymer chains to entangle, dramatically improving inner layer strength. Our parts heat up volumetrically. It’s not a surface treatment, its not a post-process, it’s a volumetric heating event that takes place as the part is being built up, layer by layer.”
There is also no speed loss in this process, as pre-heating and post-heating happen within the same process.
Both engineering resins and mid-market resins are useable with the system.
Teipel also recognized market interest in bimodal distributions for commodity type resins, such as Oliphants, vinyls and super exotic polymers.
“Oliphants, which have a high degree of crystallinity, have traditionally been problematic for 3D printing because the crystallinity causes tremendous degrees of warping in the printed part and inner layer delamination,” Teipel explained.
“Since we increase the amount of time that the polymer chains are migrating across the boundary, we are also relieving those inner layer stresses. We actually expect to see a dramatic improvement in strength and dimensional stability for Oliphants, as well as exotic high temperature polymers for the aerospace, oil & gas and biomedical communities.”
The FuseBox hardware can be integrated into existing 3D printer machines.
For more information about the FuseBox hardware and how it can improve your 3D printers, watch the video above and visit the Essentium website.