Stratasys Announces Metal Additive Manufacturing Platform

New metal 3D printing platform developed for short-run manufacturing applications.

Stratasys Ltd, a major player in thermoplastic additive manufacturing, has announced its development of a new metal additive manufacturing platform designed to displace conventional methods for short-run manufacturing.

The company’s focus in additive has been primarily on FDM and PolyJet 3D printing platforms, but Stratasys has stated that the new technology platform is being developed to directly address the needs of customers whose requirements include the production of pilot-series parts, small batch manufacturing during product ramp up and end-of-life, and customized, lightweight and complex parts.

The global market for metal additive manufacturing is projected to grow to $12 billion USD by 2028, according to industry estimates.

The new Stratasys platform has been developed internally over the past several years, incorporating the company’s proprietary jetting technology. The platform aims to provide the benefits of additive manufacturing for short-run production while overcoming material limitations of currently available metal-based additive manufacturing systems.

With this new technology, Stratasys believes it will offer customers a new ability to short-run manufacture metal parts made with commonly used powder metallurgy, starting with aluminum, at an economically competitive cost-per-part and throughput. The company also anticipates easy-to-implement post-processing and high part quality.

“We are extremely excited to announce our development of this new additive manufacturing platform, targeting short-run production applications for a variety of industries, including automotive, aerospace, defense, machining, and metal foundries,” said Ilan Levin, CEO of Stratasys. “We believe that this platform will meaningfully expand our addressable markets for the long term and provide our customers with an effective means to realize the values of additive manufacturing for powder metallurgy applications.”

Stratasys will unveil further details about this new technology at the RAPID + TCT 3D Printing and Additive Manufacturing Conference, taking place from April 23-26 in Fort Worth, Texas. Engineering.com will be there, so stay tuned for more details.

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