pps proceeding - Abstract Preview
pps proceeding
Symposium: S18 - Special Symposium: Additive Manufacturing for Plastic Components
Oral Presentation
 
 

New opportunities offered by Freeformer 3D printing process

Charlon Sébastien (1), Soulestin Jeremie (2)*, Lacrampe Marie-France (2), Krawczak Patricia (2)

(1) Mines Douai - Nord - France, (2) Mines Douai - Nord - France

Freeformer from Arburg offers a new technology for additive manufacturing of polymers that enables to use standard pellets as raw material and gives new opportunities to manufacture parts of high quality thanks to its nozzle technology. The main advantage is the possibility to use any material commercially available. However, if printing with qualified materials (ABS, TPU, supporting material, PS) is as easy as inkjet printing, the process has to be optimized before getting parts of good quality in other cases. In the same way that for regular polymer processing technologies like injection molding, optimization of the processing parameters and the choice of appropriate grade is needed. The Freeformer technology is based on two injection molding units that enables to melt the standard granulate and to feed the printing head. The discharge unit featuring a pulsed nozzle closure generates small (down to 200 µm) molten polymer droplets to build, layer-by-layer, three-dimensional parts. Thanks to the presence of two discharge units, parts of complex geometries using water soluble supporting material or parts combining hard and soft materials are easily feasible. Examples of the possibility offered by Freeform technology will be given and a comparison between parts produced using regular FDM and Freeformer technologies will be presented.