Prodways presents the first industrial laser sintering printer at under €100,000
At the opening of Rapid, the unrivaled additive manufacturing event, from May 16 to 19 in Orlando, Florida, Prodways, a subsidiary of Groupe Gorgé, presents its new industrial laser sintering printer, the ProMaker P1000 and announces the signature of a strategic partnership with the leading chemical company, BASF, for the marketing of their new PA6 laser sintering powder.
ProMaker P1000 – Prodways makes professional performance accessible
The development of this new printer is the result of the purchase of Norge Systems in March 2015 combined with the Prodways R&D teams’ expertise in powder sintering technology. It extends the current “Prodways powered by Farsoon” range in the industrial segment. ProMaker P1000 demonstrates Prodways’ ambition to make industrial plastic powder laser sintering performance accessible to a wider market in order to facilitate innovation and the development of new applications.
The new ProMaker P1000 printer boasts a wide manufacturing platform for printing large items and the added advantage of professional productivity. It offers excellent thermal stability, thanks to its smart temperature control system, and benefits from a very fine laser for high-resolution items with optimized mechanical properties.
In addition, the ProMaker P1000 has the following new features developed specially for this printer: a completely new modular coating system, enabling optimal control of the powder distribution and more even layers using all types of material, as well as a touchscreen, making it easy for users to operate.
The ProMaker P1000 benefits from Prodways’ wide range of materials with high recyclability rates, as well as the strategy of being open to other materials, which Prodways applies to its full range of printers in order to facilitate customer innovation and the development of new applications.
The ProMaker P1000 will be unveiled for the first time worldwide at the Rapid 2016 event and will be available at the end of 2016 at a special launch price of under €100,000 (excl. tax).
Partnership with BASF – integration of BASF’s new PA6 powder into Prodways’ materials portfolio
Thanks to this partnership, Prodways integrates the brand new PA6 polymer powder – announced at the end of 2015 and developed by BASF jointly with LSS, Hunan Farsoon Tech Ltd and Varia 3D – into its portfolio of laser sintering materials.
BASF’s development of this new PA6 material for 3D printing by laser sintering technology is a major breakthrough for the industrial sector. It offers new possibilities for the series production of parts, for example functional components, with more complex structures and more customized designs, but with the similar mechanical resistance, hardness and thermal stability properties as parts produced today in PA6 via traditional injection techniques.
PA6 is a widely-used material today, in particular in the automotive and electronics industries, where it can replace metal in order to produce lighter-weight parts and reduce production costs for massive parts, hot engine parts and electronic components. This new material meets the requirements of applications in all areas of industry for a wide range of components and machine parts.
It stands out by its good recyclability and adds to Prodways’ materials portfolio, which already includes over 10 grades of PA12, PA11 and TPU allowing the development of new applications for series parts.
Specifically developed to treat high performance materials such as PA6, the Prodways ProMaker P2000 HT laser sintering printer “powered by Farsoon” offers a unique high temperature capacity in its segment. It operates at a temperature of 220°C thus guaranteeing all the mechanical properties expected from BASF’s high-end PA6 powder range.
This partnership with BASF confirms Prodways’ strategy to offer new materials and technologies that allow the development of the “rapid manufacturing” applications expected by the market.
