Above: Ultimaker to partner with Global Material companies to make engineering grade materials/Image Credit: Ultimaker
Ultimaker, one of the global leaders in desktop 3D printing recently announced a collaborative alliance with global 3D printing material companies to provide industrial-grade engineering 3D printing materials to cater to the Ultimaker users.
Ultimaker has collaborated with renowned companies like BASF, DSM, Mitsubishi Chemical, DuPont Transportation & Advanced Polymers, Owens Corning, Clariant, Kuraray, Solvay and Henkel. All of these companies provide high-quality 3D printing polymer and composite filaments.
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Ultimaker will also overhaul its software offering by extensive R&D on the material expertise shared by the leading 3D printing material manufacturers. The focus will be on producing durable and most importantly reliable material properties. The collaboration will allow the companies to maintain the material profiles. This enables users to use preconfigured settings on the Ultimaker Cura software while using the specific 3D printing material, rather than configuring the settings every time the material is changed. The alliance will open doors for future strategic partnerships which will focus on more advanced applications based on user demand.
Speaking on the alliance, Jos Burger, CEO of Ultimaker said, “High quality 3D prints are the result of an optimized alignment of hardware, software and materials. The strategic alliances formed with these global material companies opens up the use of the most sophisticated engineering plastics on Ultimaker printers, allowing the customers of the companies and Ultimaker to fully embed 3D printing in their existing workflows. With these alliances, more 3D printing users are getting access to sophisticated materials for all kinds of use cases in different segments and industries.”
As per a report published by International Data Corporation (IDC) in January 2018, the global spending on 3D printing (including hardware, materials, software, and services) will reach $12.0 billion in 2018, which is close to 20% increase over the year 2017. This growing trend will only lead to an increased demand for 3D printing materials. This has prompted Ultimaker to form a strategic alliance with the global 3D printing material companies to build its material library.
Sharing his views on the strategic alliance with Ultimaker, Dr. Chris Skinner, Director of Front End Innovation at Owens Corning said, “The performance and reliability of Ultimaker 3D printers was key for us in the development of the XSTRAND™ composite filament. The reliable platform that the Ultimaker system provides enabled our team to efficiently develop high performance engineered solutions for this growing market. We use these systems day in and day out to enable both our and our customers’ innovation.”
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According to Julien Guillen, Leader Additive Manufacturing at Decathlon’s Add Lab, “We want to make sports accessible to the many by delivering quality, technical products for the best price. The larger build volume of the Ultimaker S5 now enables us to 3D print prototypes for even more product types such as footwear and helmets and many others. Due to the open filament system, we can print these objects with the materials we prefer – we can test, fail, and improve. We can change the way we prototype, the way we create. This allows us to speed up innovation and evaluate new concepts in an earlier stage, which reduces time and costs. The Ultimaker S5, combined with Ultimaker Cura software, seamlessly fits in our development chain and the improved usability gives the Decathlon Add Lab’s team the power to deliver the right products for our users, at the right time.”
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