Materialise, one of the largest 3D printing companies in the world, announced new solutions and initiatives to increase productivity, shorten build preparation time and advance serial additive manufacturing.
The new initiatives include the release of an update on its Materialise Magics software introducing several new features to decrease the build preparation process, allowing users to scale their 3D printing operations. And it also presented a vision of its next-generation Build Processors that will enable a more streamlined workflow for companies moving to serial additive manufacturing.
Magics 24: Improving Productivity and Optimising Process
Materialise Magics is one of the earliest and most powerful data and build preparation software used by the industry. Over the years it has evolved and now is with its new features it aims to increase productivity.
The new version of Magics software suite introduces a powerful tool to significantly improve productivity, helping manufacturers to optimize the production process and allowing them to free up time to focus on scaling their operations.
Productivity improvements reflect a significant upgrade with a 3X increased speed in deliver results in case of Boolean-based operations, such as Hollow and Shrinkwrap, and a 30x faster automatic nesting. In addition to this, the new Bounding Box feature reduces the nesting process to mere milliseconds.
“Technology advances continue to improve productivity of the 3D printing process and support the integration with existing manufacturing environments. This will help to remove some of the remaining barriers to adoption and stimulate companies to adopt 3D printing not just for its unique design and production benefits but also as part of a connected industrial manufacturing process – serial additive manufacturing.”
– Fried Vancraen, CEO of Materialise
Speaking on the new initiatives announced by Materialise, Vancraen added, “Technology advances continue to improve productivity of the 3D printing process and support the integration with existing manufacturing environments. This will help to remove some of the remaining barriers to adoption and stimulate companies to adopt 3D printing not just for its unique design and production benefits but also as part of a connected industrial manufacturing process – serial additive manufacturing.”
Advancing Serial Additive Manufacturing
At the on-going Formnext 2019 exhibition, Materialise presented its vision of buiding next generation Build Processors that will advance serial additive manufacturing. Materialise Build Processors are widely used in industrial printing, translating 3D designs into machine-specific build files for a variety of machines. As companies scale their 3D printing processes, they operate in increasingly more complex and distributed environments, facing multiple machine technologies.
With its future Build Processors, Materialise creates a closer integration between software and machine, providing users with a fully integrated, end-to-end workflow to support industrial scale serial additive manufacturing. In addition, the next-generation Build Processors are modular in design, making them more flexible and accessible, and allowing machine builders to integrate their proprietary software.
According to Stefaan Motte, Vice President and General Manager of the Materialise software division, “We continue to introduce new innovations and improvements to increase productivity and efficiency in the 3D printing process. But as companies scale their 3D printing operations and integrate these operations with existing and proven production processes, they are confronted with increased complexity. By collaborating with other industry leaders, we are able to optimize the entire process and create a more seamless workflow.”
Speaking about the upgraded features of Magics, Rüdiger Herfrid, Product Line Manager Data Preparation at EOS said, “A seamless data preparation workflow with automation capabilities is one of our top customer requests. EOS is committed to an open software infrastructure and developed an API with easy integration capabilities of EOSPRINT. We are pleased that Materialise, as a preferred EOS partner, will use the open interface to offer a consistent data preparation workflow for EOS machines.”
Apart from the above announcements, Materialise also announced a strategic partnership to develop a new generation of Sindoh, a South Korea-based company that makes multi-function printers, copiers and 3D printers, to accelerate the company’s entry in the South Korean industrial market. As part of the agreement, Materialise will combine its software with Sindoh’s hardware platform.
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