Materialise
Materialise
Materialise has announced additional partnerships with Nikon and Essentium and updates to two of its software platforms.
It comes shortly after revealing a series of software integrations with HP at RAPID + TCT.
With Nikon, Materialise is looking to improve insight into the 3D printing build process and will establish research activities – supported by the company’s software and Control Platform – to work towards providing users more control and increase productivity through the analysis of the build process. Meanwhile, the partnership with Essentium sees the integration of Magics Essentials software with the High Speed Extrusion (HSE) machine to enhance its volume manufacturing capabilities.
Materialise has also used RAPID + TCT as the platform to announce the latest version of its Materialise Streamics 8 3D printing operations management software and its Simulation platform.
This new version is said to provide better connectivity with the factory floor. It boasts a fully configurable web portal to allow remote design departments to optimise designs and reduce production costs. Automatic nesting across multiple build platforms helps to increase productivity, allowing users to drag and drop several parts into the build planner, where automatic nesting sorts the appropriate number of build operations.
With this new Streamics 8 software, Materialise is moving towards Digital Rights management to offer a safe and secure way of printing high-value end-use parts and scaling up operation across a global distributed manufacturing network. Establishing such a network would require full traceability, and so Streamics 8 automatically stores all relevant build data, such as serial numbers, process parameters, and part revisions. The new version of the Streamics 8 software will be available from June 2019.
“Despite increased awareness about the potential of connected, industrial-scale 3D printing, in-house 3D printing production processes are often still isolated hubs,” said Stefaan Motte, Vice President and General Manager of the Materialise Software division. “With the introduction of Streamics 8, our software tool to manage and streamline 3D printing operations, Materialise wants to transform those isolated hubs into productive and integrated production facilities, by connecting to existing production management systems and adding specific additive manufacturing execution capabilities.”
Materialise has also announced new features for its Simulation software, which include speed improvements of up to nine times for file management, a part compensation feature which allows user to predict and compensate heart-related part deformation, and the ability to simulate heat diffusion to prevent overheating during the building of parts. Materialise Simulation 2.0 is available as an optional module with Materialise Magics 23.
Today’s announcements, from partnerships with vendors to upgraded software platforms, will all contribute to Materialise’s aim of making additive manufacturing workflows more effective and efficient. Materialise believes the developments it has announced today are the kind that will help manufacturers to adopt additive manufacturing and implement it successfully.
“To take advantage of large-scale 3D printing in an increasingly cost-competitive environment, manufacturing companies require increased productivity and efficiency and a seamless integration of 3D printing into their existing and proven production processes,” commented Fried Vancraen, founder and CEO of Materialise. “Overcoming some of the remaining limitations attributed to 3D printing will require continued innovation and collaboration to create a more open market model with more control, more choice, and ultimately lower cost.”
