Designfax weekly eMagazine

Subscribe Today!

Archives

View Archives

Partners

Manufacturing Center
Product Spotlight

Modern Applications News
Metalworking Ideas For
Today's Job Shops

Tooling and Production
Strategies for large
metalworking plants

Stratasys debuts multicolor, multi-material 'supercar' of 3D printers

Feeling blue about your 3D printer's limitations? Well now you can feel green too.

The new Objet500 Connex3 Color Multi-material 3D Printer just released by Stratasys is the supercar of 3D printers, being the first and only 3D printer to combine colors with multi-material 3D printing. These are transformational super-power capabilities, the kind that you dreamed about when you first heard of 3D printers and what they might do one day.

The Connex technology has always been about blending two material bases to form different material characteristics. Now with the Objet500 Connex3 Color Multi-material 3D Printer, Stratasys engineers have taken that concept one further. This machine features a unique triple-jetting technology that combines droplets of three base materials to produce parts with virtually unlimited combinations of rigid, flexible, and even clear color materials as well as color digital materials -- all in a single print run. Users can incorporate up to 46 colors in a single model.

This ability to achieve the characteristics of an assembled part without assembly or painting is a significant time-saver. It can help product manufacturers validate designs and make good decisions earlier before committing to manufacturing, and bring products to market faster. This machine comes at a supercar price ($330,000 ... we know, you can buy a real supercar for that), but that is what you pay when you ride on the cutting edge of technology. The good news is that these types of tech leaps forward eventually filter down to the cheaper machines that most of us will purchase, so that is something to look forward to.

How it works: Three primary color materials
The Objet500 Connex3 Color Multi-material 3D Printer is based on proven Connex technology. Ideal for over-molding with Digital ABS and complex multi-material parts, this printer is designed to enable designers, engineers, and manufacturers to create models, molds, and parts that match the characteristics of production parts. It 3D-prints models and parts with the color, durability, and surface finish of end products. This includes achieving excellent mechanical properties such as tensile strength, elongation at break, and multiple hardness Shore values that simulate high-performance thermoplastics. It also allows overmolding using durable Digital ABS materials and introduces new Shore A values for Digital ABS, ranging from A27 to A95, a major advantage in manufacturing consumer products.

Similar to a 2D inkjet printer, three color materials -- VeroCyan, VeroMagenta, and VeroYellow -- are combined to produce hundreds of vivid colors. These color materials join Stratasys' extensive range of PolyJet photopolymer materials, including rigid, rubber-like, transparent, and high-temperature materials, to simulate standard and high-temperature engineering plastics.

Featuring a large build envelope of 490 x 390 x 200 mm (19.3 x 15.4 x 7.9 in.), the Objet500 Connex3 Color Multi-material 3D Printer is ideal for high-capacity production. Print jobs can run with about 30 kg of resin per cycle. True to the high resolutions available with PolyJet 3D printing technology, the Objet500 Connex3 Color Multi-material 3D Printer prints as fine as 16 micron layers for models with superior surface finish and ultra-fine detail.

Putting the machine through its paces
Engineers at beta-user Trek Bicycle in Waterloo, WI, are using the Objet500 Connex3 Color Multi-material 3D Printer for assessment and testing of accessories like bike chain stay guards and handlebar grips prior to actual production.

"The Objet500 Connex3 Color Multi-material 3D Printer changed the way we manufacture at Trek, augmenting our traditional, time-consuming CNC processes with fast, iterative, and realistic prototyping and functional testing," says Mike Zeigle, manager of Trek's prototype development group.

"Now we produce bicycle parts that look and feel like production parts. We are particularly excited about 3D printing our models directly in color. This gives our designers the ability to graphically display color contact pressure map data on rider contact parts like seats and grips. We are also working on doing the same with FEA & CFD stress data on structural bike components," says Zeigle.

Extra cool: Flexible materials in color

The Objet500 Connex3 Color Multi-material 3D Printer also features six palettes of new rubber-like Tango colors*, ranging from opaque to transparent colors in various Shore values to address markets such as automotive, consumer and sporting goods, and fashion. Overall material breakdown includes:

• Rubber-like: The Objet500 Connex3 includes a wide range of flexible rubberlike options that can be combined with rigid materials in one build. You can prototype rubber overmolding and soft, non-slip surfaces such as buttons, handles, grips, and any number of flexible details.
• Transparency: The Objet500 Connex3 enables you to build clear models or transparent/opaque combinations -- including opaque model interiors with transparent exteriors -- along with a wide range of translucent colors.
• Digital materials: With over 500 material options -- including Digital ABS -- you can 3D-print across the spectrum from rigid to flexible.

"As the first true multi-purpose 3D printer, we believe the Objet500 Connex3 Color Multi-material 3D Printer is in a league of its own, enabling you to dream up a product in the morning and hold it in your hands by the afternoon, with the exact intended color, material properties, and surface finish," says Igal Zeitun, Stratasys VP of product marketing and sales operations.

The Objet500 Connex3 Color Multi-material 3D Printer is commercially available today and is sold through Stratasys' extensive worldwide reseller network.

*The flexible materials in color are expected to be commercially available in Q2/2014.

See the specs and learn more by clicking here.

Source: Stratasys

Published February 2014

Rate this article

[Stratasys debuts multicolor, multi-material 'supercar' of 3D printers]

Very interesting, with information I can use
Interesting, with information I may use
Interesting, but not applicable to my operation
Not interesting or inaccurate

E-mail Address (required):

Comments:

Type the number: