Sample parts printed with Ultrafuse 316LX filament.
Metals and materials are two hot topics in the additive manufacturing industry and global chemical company BASF is addressing both with a new series of 3D printing materials announced at the Additive Manufacturing Users Group (AMUG) Conference in St Louis this week.
In partnership with Texas-based Essentium Materials, BASF's dedicated 3D Printing Solutions business is building up a global distribution network for plastic fused filament fabrication (FFF) materials and pooling a substantial part of its industrial filaments under the name Ultrafuse.
"We want to offer our customers all over the world high-quality, high-performance materials for fused filament fabrication printing technology," explains Firat Hizal, Marketing & Sales Manager Plastic Filaments at BASF 3D Printing Solutions.
One of those materials is Ultrafuse 316LX, a 316L stainless steel composite filament which allows users to 3D print metal parts on any open FFF machine. During a talk at AMUG, Felix Hapke, Marketing Manager for metal and ceramics at BASF detailed the material's benefits including high metal content, predictable shrinkage values between 14-17%, safety and cost advantages compared to powder-based processes. BASF says users will be able to print 100% metal parts via an industrial-standard debinding and sintering process.
The distribution agreement covers several products including Ultrafuse Z, a special, extra strong filament based on BASF materials, further developed by Essentium, and offered in combination with Essentium Materials' processing technology, FlashFuse.
"This enables us to provide a special material for FFF that allows printing components with optimum strength in the z-direction," says Hizal.
The partners plan to launch additional filled and flame-retardant filaments over the coming year.
BASF has also announced Ultrasint PA6 LM X085, a new material for use in selective laser sintering (SLS) processes. This grey polyamide-6-based powder melts at about 193 degrees Celsius and is easy to process on most commonly used SLS machines.
"These properties allow us to offer a PA6-based material to customers, especially those in the automotive and consumer goods industries, where today there is mainly only a choice between different PA11 and PA12 types," explains Alexander Cochrane, Marketing Manager 3D-Printing Powder Bed Fusion. The manufactured components are distinguished by high stiffness and strength. "The first parts produced with new Ultrasint PA6 LM are convincing, so we expect to be able to supply our first customers with our powder material in late summer," says Cochrane.
BASF is also working on new developments in the field of UV-reactive materials such as its recent Photo-Resin X004M, which has been specially optimised for stereolithography (SLA), digital light processing (DLP) and LCD printers. Further developments include UV-reactive ceramic photopolymers for metal-casting moulds in aerospace and automotive applications.
