We commence with news about a manufacturing consortium in today’s 3D Printing News Briefs, as OPEN MIND Technologies has become a member of the Georgia Tech Manufacturing 4.0 Consortium. Moving forward, Wilting, a service provider for industrial machining and metal 3D printing, has added three 3D Systems printers to its facility, and Unilever employed Formlabs solutions to reimagine its plastic bottle production. A cooperative team of researchers designed a 3D printer that has the ability to discern how to print a novel material independently. Lastly, the Italian track cycling teams are aiming for Olympic gold on their freshly 3D printed bikes.
OPEN MIND Technologies Joins Georgia Tech Consortium
OPEN MIND Technologies, a Germany-based company, is a renowned global developer of optimized hyperMILL CAD/CAM software solutions. It joined the membership-based Georgia Tech Manufacturing 4.0 Consortium, an organization providing workforce development and fostering collaborations between academia, industry, and government to advance and implement advanced manufacturing. The consortium conducts various projects, including piloting new manufacturing cycles and technology development focusing on additive manufacturing. Georgia Tech, one of the leading public research universities in the U.S., serves over 45,000 undergraduates and graduate students and carries out research worth over $1 billion annually for industry, government, and society. The initial consortium members, supported by staff at the university’s Advanced Manufacturing Pilot Facility, have contributed their technology, skilled resources, and funding. In the case of OPEN MIND, its support enables Georgia Tech students to utilize superior CAD/CAM software.
We are very pleased to join the Georgia Tech Consortium which provides a great opportunity to participate in leading research and connect with other members focused on advancing manufacturing,” stated Alan Levine, Managing Director of OPEN MIND Technologies USA. “The Consortium offers a unique opportunity to expand OPEN MIND’s collaboration with Georgia Tech to the full membership and their specialized projects.
Wilting Adds Three DMP Flex 350 3D Printers from 3D Systems
Dutch industrial machining and metal 3D printing service provider Wilting, which got its start helping a large semiconductor capital equipment manufacturer produce complex metal parts, has experienced significant growth, and so expanded its production capacity with the addition of three metal printers from 3D Systems. Specifically, the company installed two single-laser DMP Flex 350 printers, and one dual-laser DMP Flex 350 Dual printer, alongside its existing two systems, which allows Wilting to offer a broader materials portfolio for applications, like highly accurate end-use parts out of titanium and stainless steel. Wilting started working with 3D Systems’ Application Innovation Group (AIG) back in 2012 to speed adoption of advanced metal AM capabilities and expertise in its Eindhoven facility, and the company took to it like a fish to water. It now produces optimized components designed for higher performance in semiconductor capital equipment, as well as the analytics and mobility industries, and is moving into a new 183,000 sq. ft. facility.
“We place our customers and their applications at the center of each engagement. 3D Systems pioneered the use of additive manufacturing to deliver precise, reliable parts for semiconductor applications. In the early days of our relationship with Wilting, it was rewarding to share the application expertise our AIG had built from more than a decade working with semiconductor capital equipment manufacturers to scale their use of additive manufacturing. As an industry leader, the team at Wilting quickly realized AM’s advantages”, said Raph Alink, account & business development manager, 3D Systems. “It’s a big step for a company to bring AM in-house, and Wilting has already mastered the technology and is now transferring that into volume production for its customers. I look forward to seeing how our collaboration will continue to unfold, and the potential that AM will unlock for Wilting and its growth.”
Unilever Overhauled Plastic Bottle Production with Formlabs’ 3D Printing
Unilever is one of the world’s largest fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) companies, and the industry is very competitive, so brands are constantly adapting their product strategy. Packaging is a big area of innovation, and brands have to consider the safety, material usage, aesthetic appeal, and sustainability for many packaging types. Plastic products like cosmetic packaging and food and beverage containers are typically produced with blow molding, a traditional rapid mass production method for high-quality, thin-walled parts. Serioplast Global Services is one of Unilever’s partners for creating packaging for home and personal care goods, and made prototype mockups using direct 3D printing or blow molding, but these were not reliable enough or had too long a lead time, respectively.
They decided to utilize Formlabs and its compact Form 3L stereolithography (SLA) printer, which provides high precision, smooth surface finish, and the capacity to print large molds and parts. Collaborating with the company’s engineers, Unilever and Serioplast identified a material that could withstand the internal pressure and temperature of stretch blow molding (SBM), while maintaining high stability and dimensional accuracy. The glass-filled Rigid 10K Resin was their chosen material, offering stiffness, strength, and thermal resistance. The team was able construct molds for new bottle designs within just two days. These molds facilitate operators to run pilot-tests on several designs simultaneously. They offer such high quality that they can also be used for consumer testing and line filling, as well as validating the SBM process. Utilizing Formlabs’ technology, Unilever and Serioplast managed to reduce lead times by up to 70% and tooling costs by up to 90% in comparison to conventional molds, thereby enabling quicker and less expensive product launching.
MIT Printer Identifies Unknown Material Parameters On Its Own
There are now more sustainable choices than plastic constantly surfacing, but to print these novel materials from scratch, users have to tweak up to 100 parameters based on their composition, whereas mass-produced polymers already possess established parameters. A joint research team from MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms (CBA), the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), and the National Center for Scientific Research in Greece (Demokritos) sought to solve this issue by developing a 3D printer that autonomously identifies the parameters of an unfamiliar material on its own. Specifically, they incorporated three instruments into the printer’s extruder which enables it to measure the forces and flow of a material. During 20 minutes, the data is collected and then inserted into a mathematical function utilised to auto-generate material-specific printing parameters that can be plugged in readily available 3D printing software. Their work, detailed in a paper, could contribute to mitigating the environmental repercussions of 3D printing process.
Neil Gershenfeld, the senior author at CBA, stated in this paper, “We’ve demonstrated a method with which an array of intriguing materials, derived from a variety of sustainable sources, can now be effectively and independently printed in 3D. Sustainability is indeed the primary objective.”
Italian Cycling Teams to Ride 3D Printed Bikes at the Olympics
The Italian men’s and women’s track cycling teams are gearing up to compete at the 2024 Summer Olympics—set to take place in Paris from July 26 to August 11—on new versions of the Bolide F HR track bike, renowned for setting the Hour Record. Bike manufacturer Pinarello touts them as the first and the quickest 3D printed high-performance bikes ever made. Initially designed for Filippo Ganna’s successful Hour Record attempt in 2022, the men’s Olympic champion endurance team will be using 3D printed versions—dubbed Bolide F HR 3D—, while the women’s team is equipped with a custom Bolide HR C carbon model.
Since 2015, Pinarello has been leveraging 3D technologies to build its bikes. Many hours have been dedicated to the design development of the Bolide F HR 3D, composed purely of five parts and made in three standard frame sizes. Scalmalloy—known for its properties promoting high-speed, force-resistant performance—was used to print the male team’s bikes. In contrast, women’s bikes, the more lightweight Bolide F HR C model, were made to get quickly up to speed. Both models, sharing key characteristics like AirStream technology, narrow forks, and seat stays to reduce the frame’s weight, along with AirFoil sections to reduce the bike’s frontal area, have gained UCI approval. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) testing also optimized handlebar geometry for both bike models. Anyone, including other Olympic teams, can purchase these models.
Your HTML code does not contain a narrative to rewrite. However, following your instructions, here’s how the code will look like after stripping out noscript and style tags, and removing id, class, style, width, height attributes:
“`
“`
Please provide an HTML code that contains a story or content for me to rewrite in the required way.