materials | 3D printing


you can inject with real conditions with mould tempera- tures up to 120°C,” says CEO Javier Garcia. “If the mould is designed properly, you can produce


Stratasys’ Objet500 Connex multi-material 3D Printer is used by Promold- ing throughout the product development process significantly reducing lead times during prototyping and injection moulding


that closely match the final manufactured product,” says Gross Promolding quickly realised the potential of 3D


printing to enhance manufacturing: it now offers rapid development of injection moulds for final product validation and further concept development. “Tradition- ally, injection mould development takes a lengthy six weeks at least to develop, but by designing and 3D printing the moulds in-house, we can produce complex versions in just three days,” says Gross. Promolding was recently tasked with developing


fibre optic sensor housings for Fugro, a specialist in integrated geotechnical, survey, subsea and geoscience services. Using one 3D printed mould, the team were able to produce over 50 samples of the sensor housing in a number of final product materials including PP, TPE and PBT. “In the future, PRIM (Printed Injection Moulding) will be seen as a commonplace process of its own,” Gross says. Meanwhile, with its Somos PerFORM SLA resin, DSM


Functional Materials says it is possible to make injection moulding tools for short runs and concept tests in a few days. “Tools made with Somos PerFORM have high strength and can withstand elevated tem- peratures, which allow the tool inserts to be heated to produce final parts in various materials under real injection conditions,” the company says. “Tools also retain their accuracy allowing high detail parts to be produced with fine features.” Somos customer Wehl & Partner Iberica says it tried


creating a tool with digital printing (PolyJet) and stereolithography, but the only technology that worked was SLA with Somos PerFORM. “Somos PerFORM is the only additive manufacturing polymer material where


50 INJECTION WORLD | May/June 2017


up to 40 to 50 parts using a 30% glass fibre-filled material without any issues,” says Garcia. “Our customers are delighted because you can send parts out in a few days. The process speeds up the process to 1-2 weeks versus 5-7 weeks.” A slightly different take on combining injection moulding and additive manufacturing is provided by Arburg. Eberhard Duffner, head of development at Arburg, provides an example of how the company’s Freeformer additive manufacturing system can be integrated into a production cell with injection mould- ing, making use of Industry 4.0 technologies. His example is a commonplace pair of scissors with personalised logos, but it is clear that the concept can be applied to numerous other applications. Arburg has also made ‘smart’ luggage tags with the same system. “This makes it economically viable to individualise


mass-produced products in single-unit batches in a flexible, automated, digitally networked, cyberphysical production system,” says Duffner. The process steps of the system encompass order entry, injection moulding, industrial additive manufacturing and displaying the process and quality parameters on a part-specific web page.


An injection moulding machine overmoulds the


metal blades and an individual data matrix (DM) code is lasered on. From this moment on, a simple pair of scissors becomes an information carrier and even has its own website. Based on the information from the DM code, which is


read out by a scanner, the Freeformer additively applies the desired individual, raised logo onto the scissors. The Arburg host computer system archives the data, which


Wehl & Partner 3D printed this mould for electrical switch gear in polyamide 6 shot at 120°C. This mould produced 47 pieces and was fully intact after the parts were produced with only a few broken edges on the mould


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