By Cassandra Balentine
A range of three-dimensional (3D) materials suppliers focus on elastomer advancements. Here we highlight products from vendors interviewed for an article in the February issue of Industrial Print magazine.
EOS Advanced Laser Materials (ALM) has several elastomeric materials to better serve multiple verticals and target markets. “We have consultants that advise which elastomeric materials might be most suitable for your application requirements. The benefits of the thermoplastic elastomers (TPE) materials we offer include great recyclability—helping save money by reusing material multiple times—and the ability to run in the majority of selective laser sintering (SLS) platforms in the market. The beauty of AM is the ability to serve many different verticals and markets. ALM brings further value by listening to our customers’ needs and developing the right materials needed for their applications. We understand that each application has its own set of requirements and we do not believe in a ‘one material fits all’ approach in AM,” says Sam Houston, senior manager, ALM global, EOS,.
According to Jason Rolland, SVP of materials, Carbon, Inc., the Carbon platform is uniquely suited for elastomers because it generates low forces on the part during printing. This is essential to not tearing the part during printing.
“Two areas of interest for us are sustainability and color flexibility. Last year, we launched EPU46, a material designed for color flexibility that is also 40 percent derived from plants. Both color flexibility and sustainability are incredibly important to today’s consumers and we are thrilled to meet these needs. Our materials team has several very exciting new products under development that will open up entirely new markets for our platform,” continues Rolland.
Carbon strives to create materials that perform along all these dimensions, not to mention the ability to quickly produce each part at a reasonable cost while ensuring assembly efficiency. “It’s a complex problem that we really enjoy solving for any given application,” adds Rolland.
SLS printers such as the Fuse Series printers from Formlabs or stereolithography (SLA) printers such as the Form 3B/+ and Form 3BL printers work well with elastomers, according to Pareekshith Allu, materials manager, Formlabs.
Allu shares the Formlabs’ materials development team is dedicated to delivering new materials and solutions that will advance 3D printing in healthcare and dental workflows and expand the possibilities for patient-specific care. Flexible and elastomeric materials can usher in a new wave of personalized healthcare and digital dentistry that bring benefits directly to patients.
Formlabs’ Silicone 40A Resin combines the material properties of cast silicone with the flexibility of 3D printing to eliminate the labor-intensive molding and casting processes, while enabling design freedom. “With this patent-pending Pure Silicone Technology, users can print 100 percent silicone parts with complex geometries that are not possible with traditional methods—in house, in a matter of hours. Silicone 40A Resin can be used for soft, pliable, and durable parts that can withstand repeated cycles of stretching, flexing, and compression, for functional prototyping and end-use part production. This material creates parts with excellent chemical and thermal resistance, perfect for automotive and industrial applications as well as consumer products such as wearables or medical devices.”
In March of 2023, Formlabs released TPU 90A Powder, a tough elastomer powder that enables strong, functional, skin-safe parts with high tear strength and elongation. Formlabs’ growing library of SLS materials enables its customers to create parts with a range of properties including stiffness, softness, ductility, and thermal stability. TPU 90A Powder offers flexibility and robustness along with the accuracy and design freedom enabled by the SLS printing process, with features including high tear strength and elongation at break 110 to 310 percent for strong and functional TPU parts; low cost per part for low-volume production of 3D printed, flexible parts; skin safe, ideal for printing medical appliances and wearable accessories; and lower waste and higher efficiency, with a refresh rate of 20 percent.
Last year the company also released its first-ever elastomeric BioMed materials, BioMed Elastic 50A Resin, alongside BioMed Flex 80A Resin, and IBT Flex Resin to streamline workflows and reduce labor time for flexible, dental, and medical biocompatible parts. BioMed Elastic 50A Resin and BioMed Flex 80A Resin are designed with ISO 10993 and USP Class VI certifications that enable an expanded personalized approach to healthcare.
“These materials are designed for healthcare professionals and suited for long-term skin contact and short-term mucosal membrane contact for flexible patient-matched medical device components, comfortable medical devices, as well as tissue medical models for surgeons to reference in the operating room. Each material delivers varying flexibility to suit different applications,” shares Allu.
BioMed Elastic 50A Resin is a soft and elastic material for applications requiring comfort, biocompatibility, and transparency. The material’s elasticity will suit mass-personalized medical devices requiring long-term skin contact and patient-specific fit, soft-tissue models, gastrointestinal models for fluidics visualization, or complex neurovascular models.
BioMed Flex 80A Resin is a firm, flexible, medical-grade material for applications requiring durability, biocompatibility, and transparency. The ability to directly print this medical-grade resin reduces workflow times by eliminating molding to directly produce flexible, patient-specific medical devices or firm tissue medical models.
IBT Flex Resin is a Class I FDA registered, biocompatible material that delivers consistent, predictable outcomes for printing highly accurate, indirect bonding trays and direct composite restoration guides. With enhanced flexibility, tear resistance, and translucency, this material will enable dental labs and clinics to save time and costs while maintaining the accuracy needed for the seamless and precise application of orthodontic brackets and restorative composite materials.
There are also non BioMed versions of the Flex 50A and 80A resins available that were introduced by Formlabs in 2020. “The Flexible 80A Resin and Elastic 50A Resin were designed for manufacturers who wanted to replace outsourcing and molding of silicone, urethane, and rubber parts in order to reduce long turnaround times and additional labor. These materials expanded Formlabs’ library of high performance, easy-to-use soft materials and enabled the production of flexible parts in-house within hours. These resins are ideal for consumer goods prototyping, compliant features for robotics, and special effects props and models,” says Allu
The Flexible 80A Resin is a stiff soft-touch material in Formlabs’ library of Flexible and Elastic Resins, with an 80A Shore durometer to simulate the flexibility of rubber or TPU. Balancing softness with strength, Flexible 80A Resin can withstand bending, flexing, and compression, even through repeated cycles.
Elastic 50A Resin is Formlabs’ softest Engineering Resin is best for prototyping parts normally produced with silicone. With these resins, engineers and designers can make handles, grips, and overmolds, as well as wearables, such as straps, compressible buttons, and shock absorption.
Mar2024, Industrial Print Magazine