You’ve seen hundreds of stories on how young users of low-cost 3D printers create prosthetic hands and arms inexpensively. Have you ever wondered why these same users have not created prosthetic legs from those same desktop printers? The answer, of course, is that the typical extrusion material would never be strong enough to handle the loads a person would put on a prosthetic leg.
What if a better material was available? A material that had the strength to handle such loads?
Essentium Materials is a company that makes materials for extrusion low-cost 3D printers. The management team has a goal of changing the items that come out of low-cost desktop 3D printers from typical trinkets and prototypes to functional, strong products.
Essentium Materials recently developed a process using carbon nanotubes and plasma to create strong 3D printed parts, parts that are equal in strength to those made from injection molding.
The FlashFuse process consists of a two-part solution–a hardware accessory, Fusebox, and a proprietary carbon nanotube coated filament, FlashFuse Filament, to create isotropic 3D printed parts.
According to the engineers at Essentium, it’s the failure in the interlayer bonding of some printed material that limits some extrusion based 3D printers to producing only trinkets and design prototypes. The bonds in between the printed layers are so weak that under heat, tension, or z-directional force, the layers will start to peel apart. As long as this problem persists, companies will never be able to extensively use this technology in structural or functional products.
Essentium’s technology addresses this issue by combining electrically-responsive nano-particles and precision electromagnetic fields to drastically increase z-directional strength, eliminating the inter-layer bonding issue that has plagued 3D printing. Essentium coats the filament with a carbon nanotube solution to illuminate the weak joints between print layers with electromagnetic fields while printing.
With these proprietary processes and materials, Essentium can solve the z-directional strength issue, restoring up to 95% of the tensile strength of an injection molded piece.
Through Essentium’s technology, entire industries can capitalize on the design advantages of 3D printing while gaining the strength of injection molding.
Essentium Materials
www.EssentiumMaterials.com
