Carbon, a leading product development and manufacturing technology company, today announced the release of EPU 46 — its newest elastomer material. EPU 46 offers a combination of high-performance material properties, excellent durability, and a myriad of rich color options, to enable the customizable production of a wide range of premium products like saddles, footwear, and grips.
EPU 46 is designed to meet the growing demands of requirements for a broad spectrum of industries, with a focus on performance, comfort, aesthetics and more. It offers customers the ability to finetune the material stiffness without compromising its printability or changing its material properties. Additionally, EPU 46 further pushes Carbon’s efforts in sustainability as the elastomer contains 40% bio-based material and is designed for solvent-free spin cleaning and resin reclaim to minimize production waste.
“EPU 46 is the future of elastomer customization, combining the benefits of performance, comfort and durability with the excitement of custom colors and tunable material stiffness,” said Jason Rolland, SVP of Materials at Carbon. “EPU 46 furthers our commitment to providing a robust and complete idea-to-production platform that can be fully customized to our client’s specifications. This is truly the next step in our journey to creating anything that can be dreamt up.”
EPU 46’s dual-cure and energy-returning properties offer new benefits including:
• Speed and Customization: The EPU 46 platform enables a wide range of colors and material stiffnesses with excellent printability and fast print times.
• Color Fastness: The direct addition of pigment to the resin ensures that the color will not wear away or change with wear.
• Increased Stiffnesses: Tuning of lattice parameters, such as Strut diameter or cell size, enables a wide range of part stiffnesses. The ability to also tune the material stiffness allows for a wide range of tactile qualities, particularly suited for handles, grips and thin features where it is challenging to match a soft compression.
EPU 46 is an improvement of Carbon’s production elastomer portfolio, featuring market-leading elastomer printability and broader mechanical properties.
