Sofos
Farsoon Flight Machine
Farsoon Technologies first introduced Flight Technology, or Fiber Light Technology in 2019, offering ‘industry-leading’ production rates with plastic laser powder bed fusion. In 2021, the Dual-Laser configuration of the Flight 403P system was announced with even higher productivity.
The Flight HT403P system at Sofos Robotics Co, is used for industrial projects such as prototyping and series production using a range of application-specific engineering materials.
Sofos Robotics initially entered the world of additive manufacturing to improve the components that it needed for automation cells such as custom brackets and mounting plates, part nests and gripper fingers. The company began with FDM machines, printing components for itself and for a small number of clients.
John Huster, President of Sofos Robotics, said: “As our business grew, we got to the point where we knew FDM wasn’t going to be able to produce the quantity of parts we needed fast enough. We started looking at other technologies and decided on the Farsoon Flight machine due to its speed and flexibility.”
Huster noted the size of the build volume, printing speed, and the open material/parameter platform, as key reasons for moving over to the Farsoon system. He also stated that the machine had a more cost-effective service package than other systems the company was looking at.
A case that was referred to when talking about the benefits of the new machine was the production of a custom ESD safe nylon guard. To be environmentally friendly, the company had to use an ESD safe material. Prior to adopting AM into its production process, Sofos would have made the guards from stainless steel and weld the two halves together.
“The clients wanted a new single piece solution to reduce the failure rate. Using the Farsoon Flight machine along with an ESD safe nylon material from BASF, we have been able to provide them with a structurally integrated solution at a lower cost and faster turnaround,” said Huster. “Before we had the Farsoon machine it would take one of our FDM machines 12 hours to print one guard. We are now able to print 12 guards plus a full set of accompanying brackets in the same amount of time.”
Huster said: “It’s nice to be able to control so many parameters such as: operating temperature, laser scan power, scanning distance, etc. The open platform allows us to assign different parameters to each part in the build and test multiple combinations to find the perfect recipe. A benefit of the machine to Sofos was the ability to add or take out parts while the machines are printing.
Sofos tested a number of BASF materials, such as PA11 ESD, TPU and PA6 Mineral filled materials, and plans to use more BASF materials in the future. Future projects that the company are using TPU with are custom suction cups and custom pendant controller guards.
“I got to work with the Sofos team on several materials including our PA11 ESD,” said Jeremy Vos, Business Development Manager of BASF Corp. “It was great to work with an agile team and help them quickly deploy customer solutions.”
Farsoon Technologies has been at IMTS 2022 in Chicago this week and is there until the end of the show on Saturday 17 September. The company has been displaying the BASF Ultrasint PA11 ESD and Ultrasint PA11 Black CF parts produced by the Flight technology.
