Zortrax
Zortrax esa
Zortrax and the European Space Agency (ESA) have made advancements to the Endureal 3D printer that enables the production of high-performance composite parts using two blends of PEEK filament.
Using the Endureal platform over the last 12 months, the ESA has successfully produced a prototype composite part made out of standard PEEK and an experimental electrically conductive PEEK.
The primary motivation of the research and development project has been to save weight by enabling structural components to also facilitate the transfer of electricity or data via internal wiring.
“Reducing weight is always one of the key design goals in aerospace engineering and it can be done by building parts which serve multiple purposes at once,” commented Michał Siemaszko, Head of R&D at Zortrax. “In a standard aeroplane or spacecraft, you need to include both structural elements and wiring responsible for transferring energy or data between various systems. That is what we aim to solve with 3D printing PEEK components with electrically conductive paths. This way, the structural parts can at the same time perform electricity or data transfer functions without weight penalty incurred for additional wires.”
Though typically the Zortrax Endureal dual extrusion capabilities have been used to print structures to support the object being printed, the Polish 3D printing vendor has teamed with ESA to acknowledge a demand for ‘high-end’ composite parts to be additively manufactured with two high-performance polymers like PEEK. To support this endeavour, Zortrax’s engineering team made improvements to the rigidity of the dual extrusion system, which is said to have given better dimensional accuracy, and has been successful in extending the top temperature that the extrusion system can perform at to 480°C. The maximum temperatures in the build chamber and on the build platform are now 200°C and 220° respectively, which has helped to reduced warping and shrinkage, while software and firmware changes were also required.
“This will make this printer a powerful tool in the hands of engineers and designers working for high-end and demanding application like automotive, aerospace and space,” added Rafał Tomasiak, CEO at Zortrax. “We also expect ground-breaking solutions developed in projects like this one to quickly trickle down to our production level 3D printers.”
Zortrax says the process of attributing these newly developed capabilities to commercially available Endureal machines is already in progress, with customers able to carry out a simple software update.
