3D Printing News Briefs: January 30, 2018

As January comes to a close, we’ve got all the latest 3D printing news wrapped up for you in one location with today’s edition of 3D Printing News Briefs. Rize announces a new partnership with Eye2Eye, and Arcam AB is no longer on the stock exchange. Aerosint discusses the benefits of its multi-powder deposition technology, while recent research details how 3D printing technology was used in a novel application for EEG. Xometry plans to compare subtractive and additive manufacturing at the upcoming SOLIDWORKS World, Hackaday has a new 3D printing contest, and a 3D Printing Day event will be hosted in Berlin next month.

Rize Partners with Eye2Eye

Rize One

Boston 3D printing company Rize Inc. has announced a partnership with Singapore-based Eye2Eye, which provides 3D printing and optical technology solutions to multiple sectors and helps customers speed up their design process by assisting them with digitizing and migrating to 3D production. Thanks to the partnership, Rize will be expanding sales of its sustainable Augmented Polymer Deposition technology to the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region for the first time. Eye2Eye will demonstrate the hybrid Rize One 3D printer at next week’s Inside 3D Printing Singapore conference and expo.

“We welcome Eye2Eye to our fast-growing community of partners. I am delighted that our first partner in APAC is located in Singapore, given my long-standing relationship with that great country,” said Rize President and CEO Andy Kalambi. “I spent a lot of time in Singapore and was privileged to see the growth of key companies there, such as SAP, MatrixOne and Dassault Systèmes. With Eye2Eye, Rize has become a truly global company, with partners now located throughout APAC, Europe and North America.”

Arcam AB Delisted From Stock Exchange

In 2016, GE announced its intention to acquire Swedish metal additive manufacturing provider Arcam, well-known for its innovative Electron Beam Melting (EBM) technology, in a public cash offer. GE completed its purchase of 76.15% of controlling shares of Arcam in December 2016, and recently surpassed 90% ownership of Arcam AB shares, which, in accordance with the Swedish Companies Act, allowed for the initiation of the compulsory buy-out of the remaining shares by GE.

Today, the GE Additive company has officially delisted from the Nasdaq Stockholm exchange. Arcam’s delisting will allow for a “more fulsome integration with GE,” according to the release, and the last full day of trading of Arcam stock was on January 26, 2018.

Aerosint’s Multi-Powder Deposition Could Transform Industrial 3D Printing

Aerosint patterning process diagram and examples showing carbon-black colored PEEK powder (black) co-deposited with aluminum oxide powder (white).

Belgium-based startup Aerosint, founded in 2016, introduced its patent-pending powder bed 3D printing process to the world in 2017. The company has a fundamentally different approach to multi-material powder deposition, in that it selectively deposits powder material from a rotating drum that passes over a build area, rather than using several complex actuated nozzles; two drums are used to achieve multi-powder deposition in a line-by-line technique at rates of up to 200 mm per second. The process is also less sensitive to powder characteristics than techniques which use pipettes.

Dr. Kevin Eckes, an American biomedical engineering PhD working as an R&D engineer at Aerosint, explains in a Medium post that in order to introduce new opportunities in a competitive market, the 3D printing world needs to rethink the approach in powder fusion-based additive manufacturing.

“The maturation of multi-powder deposition techniques, whether pipette-based, drum-based, or otherwise, will no doubt open up a sea of opportunities for manufacturers,” Dr. Eckes wrote. “In addition to the benefits of powder waste reduction, material cost savings, and reduction of post-processing time, we see several areas of opportunity that can only be realized on an industrial scale using a multi-powder approach.”

To learn more about these areas of opportunity, and multi-powder deposition in general, check out the full post. Aerosint will also be releasing more perspectives about the benefits and applications of multi-powder deposition in the future.

3D Printing Used in Novel Application for EEG

A team of researchers from Vanderbilt University recently published a paper in the Journal of Neurosurgery, titled “Stereotactic EEG via multiple single-path omnidirectional trajectories within a single platform: institutional experience with a novel technique,” that describes a novel technique for stereotactic electroencephalography (SEEG) in patients with suspected epileptic foci refractory that used 3D printing. SEEG is being used more often to interrogate cortical, multifocal, and subcortical foci, and the researchers used their novel technology to insert 137 electrodes in 15 patients suffering from focal epilepsy. Results were favorable, and there were no clinical complications; in addition, the types of prohibitive up-front costs typically associated with other SEEG technologies would not occur here.

According to the paper, “In the authors’ technique, standard epilepsy evaluation and neuroimaging are used to create a hypothesis-driven SEEG plan, which informs the 3D printing of a novel single-path, multiple-trajectory, omnidirectional platform. Following skull-anchor platform fixation, electrodes are sequentially inserted according to the preoperative plan. The authors describe their surgical experience and technique based on a review of all cases, adult and pediatric, in which patients underwent invasive epilepsy monitoring via SEEG during an 18-month period at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Platform and anatomical variables influencing localization error were evaluated using multivariate linear regression.”

Xometry to Compare Additive and Subtractive Manufacturing at SWW18

Next week, SOLIDWORKS World 2018 will be held in Los Angeles, and Xometry, one of the top online marketplaces for custom manufactured parts, will be attending the event. The company’s instant quoting platform provides feedback and prices for your parts in several additive and subtractive processes, though once they’re optimized, it can’t tell you which type you should use. At SWW18, Xometry’s Director of Applications Engineering, Greg Paulsen, will be offering an expert comparison between the two at the third Additive Manufacturing Symposium session.

At Paulsen’s session, titled “Additive vs Subtractive Manufacturing and Subtractive for Additive,” he will discuss how both methods are able to create precise parts, but that they each have different considerations and benefits to consider before you decide. After the session, you can stop by Xometry’s booth #223 in the SWW Partner Pavilion to see its instant quoting platform for yourself, along with its Add-In for SOLIDWORKS, meet team members to discuss your parts, pick up manufacturing toolkits and SLS Xometry/SOLIDWORKS-branded spinners, and enter a raffle for the chance to win $500 in parts. You can learn more about SWW2018 here; 3DPrint.com readers can register for a special discounted rate using the code SWW18PRINT3D.

Hackaday Hosting New 3D Printing Contest

From now until February 20th, 12 PM PST, Hackaday is holding a new 3D printing contest, called “Repairs You Can Print.” Hackaday wants to see the best repair jobs participants have completed using 3D printed jigs, parts, and tools, and the top 20 projects will receive $100 in Tindie credit. Tell the story of how you used 3D printing technology to repair something as a new project on Hackaday.io. Once it’s published, click the “Submit project to…” menu to enter it. All projects must be open source, and a Prusa i3 Mk3 3D printer, plus the Multimaterial Upgrade, will be awarded to the winners of the Best Student Entry and the Best Organization Entry. Students must be able to prove that they are currently enrolled in school, while the Organization Prize is reserved for social or educational organizations, like FIRST Robotics Club; don’t forget to specify in your project that you want to be considered for one of these special prizes.

“People often show off trinkets, toys, and baubles that they print, while forgetting to share the real work horse projects: repairs that get the job done. Have you ever printed a replacement part, improved an existing part to provide better functionality, or designed a tool or jig that made a tough repair a snap? We want to hear about it and we have some sweet prizes for those who show off the coolest repair jobs,” the contest description states.

3D Printing Day Hosted in Berlin

Next month in Germany, 3YOURMIND and the 3D-Printing Network are working with the Technical University of Berlin’s Center for Intellectual Property to host a 3D Printing Day in Berlin, in order to connect 3D printing specialists and industry partners. Representatives from startups and global corporations alike will attend the event to show how 3D printing technology can change logistics and production, such as German railway company Deutsche Bahn. Key speakers include Iris Bröse, Project Manager 3D Printing from Bitkom, who will present on the political pathways and hurdles Germany and the EU will have to tackle in the future, and Stephan Kühr, 3YOURMIND’s CEO, who will discuss his company’s experience in defining the Agile Factory of the Future.

“It is important to keep cultivating the innovative spirit that brought significant (economic/industrial) growth in the region, and for us specifically, the grounds to start revolutionizing manufacturing worldwide,” said Kühr. “I have enough evidence to believe that Industrial 3D Printing will play a key role in this process, and it is a topic worthy to be addressed from several approaches.”

Berlin’s 3D Printing Day will take place at 10 AM on February 13, 2018, with a networking event at 7 that evening; visit the 3D Printing Day website for registration and further details.

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