Dyemansion TCT
Dyemansion stand at TCT Show 2018.
Dyemansion is to showcase 3D printed parts that have been post-processed with a new surface finishing technology at formnext in November.
The machine is still currently under development, but was hinted at last month when the company announced its Series A funding of $5m.
With that investment, Dyemansion is hoping to commercialise the vapour finishing technology by 2020. It is aiming to achieve injection moulding surface quality with this platform, and in 2019 will deliver the machine to three or four customers through a pilot stage.
The technology will supplement the current post processing chain that Dyemansion currently offers, which features cleaning, surfacing and colouring steps. It will represent a replacement or additional surfacing step to the Polyshot stage, and has come about after the company participated in multiple projects featuring flexible materials.
“We recognised that it’s important because we were involved in projects with flexible materials and we have a process for PA12 and 11, and it works quite well,” Dyemansion CEO, Felix Ewald told TCT, “but when it comes to flexible materials, you cannot have impact with mechanical processes so we recognise we need to deliver a solution for flexible materials as well. Many people say they want to have injection moulded surface quality, so we decided to go for that. It’s not a mechanical process, it’s a chemical process. Some people call it vapour polishing.”
The news comes after Dyemansion announced the expansion of its colour capabilities at the recent TCT Show. Now, Dyemansion customers have access to ten times as many RAL colour shades as they did previously: “In additive manufacturing in the future, everything will be about standards and RAL colours are the standard in the colour industry,” Ewald explained. “We decided to develop the RAL colour pallet for SLS parts and from now on 170 RAL colours are available for our customers.”
It represents a company continuing to enhance its product offering, and one that has made great strides since its foundation three years ago. It has gone from a team of 4 to a team of 40, and has its sights on offering a fully automated post-processing solution for powder bed fusion users. This was another reason for the recent Series funding.
“When you talk with different customers and when you see different applications, everything is about bringing down the costs, automate everything, connect everything,” said Ewald. “Of course, we will never build our own printer because there are a lot of companies out there but we want to deliver the fully automated post-processing platform for that. All our processes are automated by itself. Every process works for itself but our goal is to have a fully automated post-processing platform. That’s the goal but I cannot tell you how long it will take.”
Dyemansion will be exhibiting at formnext in Hall 3.1, Booth G61 between November 13th – November 16th.
