With the continuous application of 3D printing technology, new market opportunities have emerged in the upstream and downstream industry chains, such as 3D post-printing.
Editor’s note: This article comes from WeChat public account “Antarctic Bear 3D Print” (ID: dddyin), author Antarctic Bear 3D Print, slightly cut.
On October 23, 2019, the Antarctic Bear learned that the UK’s 3D printing post-processing specialist Additive Manufacturing Technologies (AMT) announced the completion of a $5.2 million Series A financing. This round of financing consists of DSM Venturing (the global material producer Royal DSM’s venture capital department), the Foresight Williams Technology EIS fund (an investment fund consisting of private equity firm Foresight Group LLP (Foresight)) and the venture capital department of Williams Advanced Engineering. AMT will use the newly raised $5.2 million in funding to commercialize after-treatment technology.
AMT CEO Joseph Crabtree said: “This funding will speed up the commercialization of our 3D printing and post-processing systems, from the selection of materials to the finishing of parts for the manufacturing process of industrial customers. End solution. We hope to become the world leader in automated post-processing technology.”
△From left: Joseph Crabtree, CEO of AMT, and Luis Folgar, Executive Vice President, Americas, Austin, Texas.
AMT’s PostPro3D technology
AMT was founded in 2017, focusing on automated post-processing systems for 3D printed parts manufacturing; Headquartered in Sheffield, with manufacturing facilities in Hungary. It is scheduled to open its North American headquarters in Austin, Texas in the fourth quarter of 2019. They believe that the large manufacturing cost of 3D printing comes from a large number of manual post-processing steps. For example, after 3D printing, the process of cleaning and polishing parts is labor intensive.
AMT’s post-processing system is designed to “release the ability of 3D printing for mass production” to help customers automate their manufacturing processes. The core of its technology is the proprietary boundary layer automaticSmoothing Technology (BLAST), developed by the University of Sheffield Advanced Additive Manufacturing (AdAM) Center.
△PostPro3D post-processing system
In September 2018, AMT’s first commercial system, PostPro3D, was launched. PostPro3D is certified by a third-party regulatory body to be able to process 3D printed components into sealed, smooth parts suitable for BLAST technology. AMT claims that the quality of its parts is comparable to that of injection molded parts. And, it is compatible with a variety of polymer 3D printing technologies such as powder bed fusion, HP Multi Jet fusion, high speed sintering SLS and FDM / FFF.
At the RAPID + TCT 2019 in May, AMT also introduced two new automated post-processing systems, PostPro3DColor and PostPro3DMini. The PostPro3DColor system can polish 3D printed parts and also color them at the same time. On the other hand, PostPro3DMini is a smaller version of the original PostPro3D with a processing chamber of 300 x 350 x 300 mm.
△ 3D printed parts made of EOS PA2200 material are post-processed using the PostPro3D system.
Commercialization of 3D Print Post-Processing Technology
In 2017, AMT received £624,000 ($782,000) from Innovate UK, the UK government’s Technology Strategy Committee. In addition, it also acquired Midwest Additi through Mercia Asset Management PLC.Ve Ventures and NPIF-Mercia Equity Finance’s seed investment.
With new funding, AMT plans to accelerate sales of its post-processing systems. It is also preparing to offer a commercial version of its digital manufacturing system as a fully integrated post-processing solution. Digital manufacturing systems use powder removal, surface modification, and coloring to automatically replace the post-processing steps that were previously required.
In our additive manufacturing portfolio, we will support it to accelerate development.”
China’s 3D printing and post-processing companies
The importance of 3D post-printing , is recognized by more and more applications. In October 2019, the Antarctic bear exposed a domestic manufacturer that specializes in 3D printing and post-processing of nylon/TPU materials, Dongguan Dewei (DYEWIN). Their self-developed 3D printing parts surface treatment and 3D printing parts dyeing and other post-processing systems, this set of clear powder + surface fine processing + dyeing system price is only 20% of foreign similar imported products, it can be said that everyone uses Affordable nylon/TPU 3D post-printing equipment.
