Author: Solivet

PostProcess entered this year like everyone else: with renewed hope and energy. After the struggles that 2020 had brought upon the world, we were ready and willing to move forward and push ahead. For us, this year brought an abundance of progress: new partnerships, a new board member, and, of course, new and exciting ways to digitize the additive manufacturing workflow. Let’s look at the major highlights from the past year here at PostProcess.

Shaping Additive with Collaboration: Partnership with Carbon
In May, we announced our partnership with major 3D printing manufacturer Carbon. We launched our automated solution, the DEMI 910, to pair with Carbon’s L1 and M2 3D printers. The DEMI 910 optimizes end-part quality, improves safety, and increases throughput for Carbon resin post-processing.

The DEMI 910 can process the entire build platform from a Carbon Large Form L1 printer or two build forms from the Carbon High-Resolution M2 printer. PLM-403-SUB solution yielded improved user experience, efficiency, and throughput compared with cleaning with isopropyl alcohol (IPA).

Combined with our AUTOMAT3D® software platform and our Carbon-specific detergent, the DEMI 910 offers automated resin removal for the most popular Carbon resins: CE 22110, DPR 10, RPU 70, MPU 100, EPX 82, DPR 10, EPU 40, EPU 41, EPX 82, FPU 50, MPU 100, RPU 70, RPU 130, and UMA 90. Carbon DPR 10 resin is a proven material used in dental and orthodontic model production and a range of other applications.

Dinsmore, Inc., a leading California 3D printer service that specializes in design for prototyping, additive manufacturing, and general 3D printing, adopted our DEMI 910 solution. Using Carbon’s L1 and M2 Digital Light Synthesis™ (DLS™) printers for production, the DEMI 910 automates their resin removal process, which has been integral for their growth by speeding up production to maintain the productivity and value they are known for. According to Jay Dinsmore, CEO at Dinsmore, “The DEMI 910 has truly proven revolutionary in enhancing efficiencies and keeping part and production within budget.”

Achieving Biocompatibility Milestone
Along with the success of the DEMI 910, our resin removal detergent PLM-403-SUB achieved compliance with ISO Standard 10993 for evaluation of biocompatibility, as validated by Toxikon Corporation. This detergent serves as an integral part of the company’s comprehensive automated resin removal solution, and creates an impactful new industry standard of post-printing in the medical industry.

Joining Forces with Renowned Fraunhofer IAPT

We kicked off the summer with a major partnership: in June we announced our collaboration with Fraunhofer Institution for Additive Manufacturing Technologies IAPT, part of the world’s leading applied research organization Fraunhofer. Fraunhofer IAPT installed a PostProcess DECI™ support removal solution to aid in the digitization of their fused deposition modeling (FDM) processes. The DECI implements Volumetric Velocity Dispersion to assist in support removal associated with FDM printing.

Along with the DECI being used for their FDM process needs, Fraunhofer collaborated with us on metal surface finishing technology with the PostProcess DECI Duo. They printed high-precision test specimens in various materials and supplied us with highly accurate measurements and analysis of the finished parts.

Teaming Up with Global Metal AM Specialist AddUp
In November, we announced our partnership with AddUp, a metal 3D printing machine manufacturer and producer of parts by metal additive manufacturing. The DECI Duo will be paired with AddUp printers to help the affordability and safety of manufacturing AM parts by reducing the cost of post-printing and improving safety and traceability through digitization and automation.

With the DECI Duo automated metal surface finishing solution, AddUp focused on parts for aerospace, fashion, energy, automotive, energy, and medical industries. Partnering with PostProcess just made sense, according to Frank Moreau, CEO of AddUp, “[we found] the DECI Duo to meet the most challenging requirements of our customers.”

Pioneer of Big Data Analytics Joins Board of Directors
March brought great news for our Executive Board of Directors. We were honored to announce that Dr. Usama Fayyad had joined our board of directors. Dr. Fayyad is a world-renowned expert in data analytics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence (AI). His impressive resume includes: being the world’s first Chief Data Officer at Yahoo, Chairman, co-founder, and CTO at several startups in Seattle and San Francisco, launching the largest technology accelerator in the Middle East/North Africa, and co-founding OODA Health, among many other notable career accomplishments.

Dr. Fayyad has published over 100 technical articles and holds more than 20 patents. Dr. Fayyad joined our board alongside other seasoned executives, who help guide PostProcess with their insights from building and leading a variety of highly successful companies.

So while 2021 might be wrapping up, PostProcess is just getting started. We’re excited to see what’s in store for 2022 and look forward to providing you with even more opportunities to automate and digitize your additive manufacturing workflow.

-> Want to connect? Contact Us

-> Return to Blog Homepage

What a year it’s been – not just for the additive manufacturing sector or PostProcess Technologies, but for the world as a whole. Between the good, the bad, and the oftentimes very ugly, most of us are probably excited to move on past 2020. Though this year certainly didn’t come without its fair share of challenges, we are proud of our perseverance and the progress we made in further digitalizing the additive workflow

As we wrap up the start of the new decade, we’re taking a moment of reflection to look at our year in review and speak to some of our most notable highlights throughout this strange year.

Innovating with Product Launches
A developing industry calls for unique, novel solutions. In 2020, we launched the world’s first-ever automated post-printing solution for production SLA printing – the DEMI 4000™ Resin Removal Solution. The DEMI 4000 was developed to addresses the growing market demand for a production-ready, software-driven finishing solution for high-volume SLA with the same fast cycle times, exceptional chemistry longevity, and safety features available in PostProcess’s existing lineup.

We also rolled out our fifth technology family, Variable Acoustic Displacement (VAD) for automated powder decaking – specifically for Selective Laser Sintering and Multi Jet Fusion print technologies. Enabled for scalability, VAD optimizes mechanical energy and leverages intelligent closed-loop thermal and displacement techniques to reduce cycle times while increasing part fidelity.

Additionally, we unveiled an advancement to our array of detergents specific to additive resin removal. PLM-403-SUB is not only optimized for safety, but lasts 6x longer than IPA, and bears a heightened flashpoint.

Receiving Distinction with Patents
In the past year, we’ve been issued not one but two new U.S. patents, helping to establish our role in the industry as true innovators. We’re pleased to now be able to call our Volumetric Velocity Dispersion (VVD) technology and Submersed Vortex Cavitation (SVC) technology patented.

Broadening Our Reach with New Channel Partners
Thanks to the hard work of our world-class team, 2020 saw us connect with new channel partners – expanding us into Asia with C. ILLIES & Co., Australia through BV Products, Southeast Europe with Lino, and into countries like Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kirgizia, and Armenia with Z-Axis. Domestically, we joined forces with TriMech and GoEngineer.  As we extend our global reach, we’re helping more customers fully automate their additive workflows.

Emergency Response During The Pandemic
Of course, you can’t discuss this year without touching on the impact of the global pandemic. As the COVID-19 crisis ramped up, we went to work supporting Manhatten-based service bureau Print Parts’ Nasopharyngeal (NP) swab printing efforts with the PostProcess™ DEMI 800™ Resin Removal solution.  Additionally, our PostProcess™ BASE™ Support Removal solution was employed by our longtime customer, the Savannah College of Art & Design (SCAD), for Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) support removal on face shield components. Locally in the Buffalo, NY area, we utilized our own in-house FDM 3D printing capabilities as part of a joint effort to produce face shields for first responders.

Driving Thought Leadership Through Virtual Events
With the widespread cancellation of industry tradeshows, virtual events seemed to be everywhere this year. In addition to a myriad of webinars throughout the year, we managed to put on two separate iterations of our virtual tradeshow, UNLOCK AM Live, taking place in March and September. September’s event, UNLOCK AM Live; Today & Tomorrow featured Fortune 100 brands like Google, Ford, and Thermo Fisher, as well as leading additive companies like Siemens, Protolabs, Henkel, Jabil, and more. Recordings from the show are available for download today.

Leading Industry Research
In 2020, we launched our second annual industry-wide additive survey, seeing an exponential increase in participation compared to 2019. Subsequently, we were able to aggregate the resulting data into a comprehensive report – our 2nd Annual Additive Manufacturing Post-Printing Trends Report. This report included key highlights like showing that the majority of respondents in high growth markets like Automotive, Aerospace, and Defense report that their current post-print methods are already a challenge to meeting their current additive manufacturing goals.

Collaborating with Customers
We continually received great feedback from recent customers who experienced transformative benefits as a result of implementing our solutions. Some of this year’s include:

• Finnish crimping manufacturer Lillbacka Powerco Oy incorporated our PostProcess™ RADOR™ Automated Surface Finishing solution into their Direct Metal Laser Sintering (DMLS) operation to better finish custom end-use parts in shorter amounts of time.
• Two mighty, Buffalo-based companies in the dental/orthodontic space; Orthodent Laboratory (using the DEMI 800 Resin Removal solution and RADOR Surface Finishing solution for Continuous Liquid Interface Production printing) as well as Great Lakes Dental, who reduced the bottleneck with automated surface finishing and powder removal capabilities from the RADOR.
• Netherlands-based full-color 3D printer, Marketiger implemented the PostProcess Technologies™ DEMI 400™, which proved gentle and exact enough to effectively finish Marketiger’s Mimaki 3D printed parts.
• As veteran 3D printers, Massachusetts-based service bureau Empire Group optimized their workflow via the DEMI 800 with proprietary SLA-formulated detergent, allowing an increase in their printing flexibility.

We look forward to seeing what the future holds, and more specifically, what 2021 has in store for both PostProcess Technologies and everyone in the 3D printing industry.

-> Want to connect? Contact Us

-> Return to Blog Homepage

It’s no secret that Additive Manufacturing is a powerful tool, allowing engineers to create organic geometries and build parts in a completely unique process. One factor that enables these one-of-a-kind part builds is soluble support material. However, in an additive technology like Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) soluble support material can increase build time, the material cost of the part, and the amount of time that must be dedicated to the post-processing support removal step.

When designing a part, it is always important to understand the process in which the part will be produced, and the case is no different with Additive Manufacturing. The classic approach to additive is very siloed, sectioning off designing, building, and post-printing as separate steps, with the latter usually left as an afterthought.

However, post-printing is an integral part of the overall additive workflow, so it is important for all three of these steps to be considered in order to effectively streamline production, and ultimately improve scalability. This article will take a deeper look at support removal and how your part orientation, support settings in the slicing software, and part design can affect support material usage and removal. Using these tips combined with PostProcess Technologies’ VORSA 500 or BASE Support Removal systems for FDM will decrease your overall part cycle time.

Part Orientation

Depending on the geometry of your part, orientation can play a huge role not only in the part’s strength but also in the amount of support material that is used during the print step. Below you’ll find a simple example of how orientation can affect the amount of support material required.

Figure 1 shows a L-bracket printed on its end, and Figure 2 shows the same L-bracket printed flat on its side. In the below screenshots from the GrabCAD Print software, the green represents the model material of the part while the orange represents the support material required to print the part in that orientation. As you can see in the example below, build time is reduced by about 58% and support material usage is reduced by about 91% just by changing the build orientation of your part. This translates to a shorter overall part cycle time, as well as a lower part cost for you.

To determine if you have effectively minimized the support material needed for a printed part, you can use slicing software like Stratasys’s GrabCAD Print or Insight (if you have a Stratasys FDM printer) to preview the build and estimate the amount of time and material required. If you use Insight, there is also an Automatic Orientation function that will allow you to select the “Minimize supports” method. By choosing this option, you will see a couple of different orientation alternatives to minimize your support material usage. It’s important to keep in mind that this method in Insight does not always work, but it should always be able to help you figure out if you are on the right track. Especially if you have a complicated part, this software component is ideal for showing you options to minimize your support material usage.

Slicing Software Support Settings

When you cannot alter or change the design of the part, there are still things you can do to help reduce the amount of required support material in your build. In Insight, for example, if you have a part as shown in Figure 4, you can change how much support material is used by altering the “Grow Support” setting. By default, the software is set at “Small only”. However, in some cases you can modify it to “No.” See Figure 5 and 6 for the before and after results (in this case, the red is model material and the gray is support material).

By changing this setting, you eliminate the support material that grows from the bottom of the feature (in this case a hole) to the build platform. In the end, it comes to about a 10-minute reduction in build time (6% overall reduction) and 0.141 inᶟ reduction in support material (15% overall reduction) for this single part.

Part Design

The final option for reducing support removal time is to be strategic with your part design by maximizing on the benefits of whatever print technology you are using. With FDM, you can take advantage of self-supporting angles and, in combination with your part orientation, reduce the amount of support material needed. In some cases, this can help to strengthen your printed part.

So, just what is a self-supporting angle, and how do you know what the value of that angle is? A self-supporting angle is the angle from a line parallel with the build platform, to the feature being supported (see Figure 7).

In general, the angle is 45⁰. With that said, any overhanging geometry that has an angle of less than 45⁰ will require support material. However, to get specific, the actual value is in the support settings in GrabCAD print, and if you are using a Stratasys printer, in Insight. The actual value will vary based on the printed model material and the slice height that the printer is set at. For example, on a Stratasys Fortus 450mc, loaded with ASA material and printing at a slice height of 0.010”, the part will have a self-supporting angle of 43⁰, whereas Nylon 12CF is 50⁰. So that angle could change slightly when changing materials and/or slice heights.

While designing a part to be printed on an FDM printer it’s essential to understand what orientation the part will be printed in, and where you may be able to utilize tricks like self-support angles in your part design. Remember, this will help reduce the support material needed and help make the support removal process that much faster. Below is a self-supporting example that will illustrate how effective this can be in saving printer build time, support material usage, and ultimately reducing the time it takes to remove the support material.

Just like with any tool, it takes time and practice to design parts that take advantage of what Additive Manufacturing can bring to your engineering or design teams. As you start to look at the lifecycle of designing, building, and post-printing, explore the product offerings of PostProcess Technologies, specifically the VORSA 500 and BASE systems as solutions for FDM. Both of these systems are built with our proprietary Volume Velocity Dispersion (VVD) technology, which has been developed specifically for additive manufacturing to remove support material more efficiently and streamline workflows overall.

-> Read automated solutions for FDM Support Removal

-> Want to connect? Contact Us

-> Return to Blog Homepage

Perhaps the most exciting aspect of the additive manufacturing industry is its scalability. With the capability to manufacture a part pretty much on-demand, 3D printing certainly has the potential to alter the way that manufacturers not only create their products, but also how they manage their supply chains, purchase raw materials, and allocate engineering resources. With an efficient, streamlined workflow enabled by additive manufacturing, companies can save significant amounts of time and money, and scale their operations at a pace they’d perhaps never before thought tangible.

With the knowledge that the concept of scalability is integral to enabling fully automated workflows, PostProcess set out to create an automated resin removal solution to accommodate high-volume stereolithography (SLA) production. Though PostProcess has developed multiple existing solutions for hands-free resin removal, this solution, called the DEMI 4000™, is our largest automated resin removal solution to date. The solution is specifically aligned for SLA print technologies and allows operations to handle high-volume operations with either large-sized parts or large builds with smaller-sized parts. Let’s walk through five of the features that make the UL/CSA listed and CE compliant DEMI 4000 a revolutionary innovation for the additive realm.

1. Patented SVC Technology
Submersed Vortex Cavitation (SVC) is the same type of technology used in several of PostProcess’s other automated solutions for SLA, DLP, and CLIP print technologies. Controlled by the AUTOMAT3D® software platform (more on that soon), SVC optimizes the rate of resin removal with advanced ultrasonics, a vortex pumping scheme, as well as heat and fluid flow.

2. AUTOMAT3D Software
With a user-friendly interface, the AUTOMAT3D software takes the guesswork out of post-printing with pre-programmed recipe formulations. Hosted on a multi-touch HMI interface, the software works to control the agitation intensities, temperatures, process times, and more to produce consistent end part finishings with no breakage. Rather than dealing with trial and error, operators spend less time on post-printing, and simply have to “press play and walk away.”

3. Large Processing Tank
Measuring 890mm x 890mm x 635mm, the DEMI 4000’s tank is able to handle large or heavy loads of parts at one time, effectively increasing throughput and reducing cycle times. The DEMI 4000 functions to align with the following printers:

3DS ProX 800
Max build envelope:
25.6” x 29.5” x 21.6” (650mm x 750mm x 550mm)
RPS NEO800
Max build envelope: 31.5” x 31.5” x 23.6” (800mm x 800mm x 600mm)
SSYS V650
Max build envelope: 20” x 20” x 23” (508mm x 508mm x 584mm)

4. Powered Lift System
The DEMI 4000’s ergonomic powered lift system allows for automatic lowering and heightening of tray loads. The automated adjustable rack system allows users to simultaneously process multiple build trays of various heights and widths. In addition to being convenient, the fully enclosed envelope helps ensure operator safety, as well as a clean work environment. The system itself integrates with the machine’s SVC technology for optimal ease of use.

5. Additive Formulated Chemistry
PostProcess’s detergents for resin removal are specifically developed for additive post-printing, unlike other common chemicals. Each detergent is uniquely optimized for different types of resins, including for specialized applications such as ceramic-filled resins and high-temp resins.

Our latest generation of detergent was found to have better longevity than all typical solvents (e.g. IPA, TPM, DPM), equating to more infrequent chemical change-outs, improved environmental-friendliness, and therefore a safer workplace environment. Having a flashpoint over 200°F / 93°C, this detergent complies with regulatory requirements.

Thanks to this unique blend of software, hardware, and chemistry, the DEMI 4000 is adept at consistently finishing parts with complex geometries and intricate internal channels. You can learn more about what the DEMI 4000 has to offer in an upcoming live tour here.

-> Read about our latest resin removal chemistry innovation in this Application Note

-> Want to connect? Contact Us

-> Return to Blog Homepage