THREE FOR

Laura Griffiths speaks to three companies with big ambitions for the year ahead.

In With The Old

The proliferation of established brands entering the additive manufacturing (AM) space has become a question of not if but when certain manufacturing and technology marques will make the shift. HP, which reportedly hit a milestone of over 170 million parts printed with its Multi Jet technology last November, has made waves since entering the market in 2016, and most recently, Nikon, with its takeover of metal AM company SLM Solutions, has sets its sights on becoming a global AM leader.

KraussMaffei Technologies GmbH, a German manufacturer of injection moulding and plastic extrusion equipment, can now be added to that list. The company first teased its entry onto the market last summer, and at K Show in October introduced two AM systems in a bid to open up the technology for industrial production, as Rolf Mack, Vice President Additive Manufacturing at KraussMaffei Technologies GmbH, told TCT.

“We as a one stop solution provider are convinced that additive manufacturing can complement the entire lifecycle of a plastic component – with its unparalleled freedom of design - from prototyping up to mass customised product runs,” Mack said. “Combining the AM technology with our experiences in providing industrialised solutions and services for plastic processing, we support our customers to utilise the potential of AM at scale.”

Mack acknowledges the low adoption rate of AM compared to mainstream manufacturing technologies and suggests its “enormous potential” has not been fully realised – yet. With its powerPrint and precisionPrint machines based on plastic granulate and resinbased 3D printing processes and aimed at applications in medical, construction and foundry markets, KraussMaffei believes it has a strong solution.

"We are convinced that AM production systems have to become even more like other industrial plastic processing technologies,” Mack added. “This is exactly what our product lines aim for. Industrial grade production. No trial and error when producing. The first part must be right. We call it 'first time right', enabled by having our machine and material tailored to the application. To us this means that parts come out of a printer with the required quality parameters with the first productions cycle. In my view, this is a prerequisite for an industrialised process which additive manufacturing has to become.”

The company says it already provides training and consulting to improve awareness around AM, and plans to spend the next year qualifying applications and delivering first machines to select customers and partners, starting with the powerPrint and the European market.

The Supergroup

Of all the merger and acquisition headlines that have dominated the industry in the last three years, perhaps the biggest of 2022 was the merging of two of the industry’s most well-known brands, Ultimaker and MakerBot. The desktop 3D printing outfits announced their intent to merge last May and by September UltiMaker – with a capital M –was introduced with former MakerBot CEO Nadav Goshen at the helm.

“As the merger progresses, we are bringing our global teams together –we have great talent in all areas of 3D printing,” Goshen told TCT. “We also have a lot of exciting releases on the horizon.”

The company has already introduced two new machines post-merger, including the MakerBot SKETCH Large educationfocused printer and, most recently, the S7,