One of the weaknesses of 3D printers are production errors and object resistance, Essentium may have found the solution to the problem
The 3D printing technologies are continuously revolutionizing. After lasers, here comes electricity. Essentium's new FuseBox uses electricity to produce objects that are stronger than those made with other 3D printers.
The heat created by the electricity melts the materials used, almost always plastic, to create objects based on preset shapes. The printer is slated to be presented at the Rapid International Conference in Pittsburgh. The meeting was called by several manufacturers and the theme was to find a solution to make machines and objects more resistant in order to facilitate the global development, even within industries, of 3D printers. And in this context, the technology shown by FuseBox for its simplicity surprised the participants.
Stronger objects
The electrical energy, heating in a unique way the object and the parts already created during the composition of the various parts avoids as much as possible the construction errors. The developer company declares that with this method the objects made are 95% stronger than those of the competition. FuseBox does not have the problem of delamination, which is the process of breaking laminates in composite materials. This often happens in the FDM technique of 3D printers, i.e. in fused deposition modeling. FDM works on an additive principle by releasing material over several layers. A plastic filament or wire is unwound from a spool, which delivers the material to a nozzle, with which the flow can be managed. The nozzle is heated to be able to melt the material and can be guided in both horizontal and vertical directions. The heating by electricity that FuseBox puts in place makes the various parts of the object stronger and prevents printing errors in most cases.
Features and Price
It must be said that at the moment, compared to other 3D printing technologies, FuseBox is not cheap. It is a printing system that costs between 15,000 and 20,000 euros. Fortunately, however, it is compatible with several systems, which means that many companies could associate it with their production processes. Another flaw is the speed, compared to other solutions FuseBox operates slower.