Roboze, the Italian-American original equipment manufacturer (OEM) of additive manufacturing (AM) platforms for ultra-strong composites and superpolymers, will unveil a new heated build chamber/dedicated extruder technology called Hypermelt at Formnext 2023. Roboze claims that when combined with Hypermelt, the company’s ARGO 1000 3D printer is the largest pellet-based 3D printer in the world.
The ARGO 1000 with Hypermelt allows users to 3D print metal-like polymer parts with volumes up to 1 cubic meter and speeds up to 2kg per hour. According to Roboze, this makes the ARGO 1000 ten times faster than filament-based methods while reducing production costs by up to 60 percent.
Visitors to Formnext 2023 in Frankfurt (November 7-10) can see the ARGO 1000 with Hypermelt at the Roboze stand (C21) in Pavilion 11.1.
In a press release announcing the launch of Hypermelt at Formnext 2023, Roboze CEO Alessio Lorusso said: “Hypermelt technology offers our customers the ability to produce large production batches competitively compared to traditional techniques, producing components of up to 1 cubic meter at a time The costs are far lower than current large format filament technology and the speed is up to ten times faster. This innovation marks a new era in 3D manufacturing with advanced materials.”
Simone Cuscito, Chief R&D Officer at Roboze, said: “Hypermelt technology represents an extraordinary revolution [AM], with the potential to completely transform the way the world creates large-format parts from high-performance materials. We are proud of this important result, achieved thanks to the commitment and vision of the Roboze team, and to be at the forefront of this transformation. We believe the combination of Hypermelt technology and ARGO 1000 represents a turning point in the history of the manufacturing industry.”
Roboze’s activities are one of the best proofs that polymers and composites are still at the forefront of innovation in the AM sector, despite the great advances in all other material classes. As I mentioned in a recent post about the adoption of Roboze’s 3D printed parts for the oil and gas supply chain in Nigeria, the continued acceleration of innovation in 3D printed polymers and composites has particular implications, particularly for less industrialized regions of the world World economy.
On the one hand, this is due to the relatively large distance that separates such markets from the central links in the global supply chains for finished metal parts. While these markets are far from metal parts hubs, they also tend to be important sources of fossil energy. In the long term, focusing on AM-driven production of parts made from high-performance polymers and composites could not only allow countries like Nigeria to offset the lack of control over their metalware sources. It could also enable them to become the key players in the next generation of polymer parts by creating largely self-sufficient fossil fuel supply chains closest to the points of demand.
As with any remotely fundamental transformation of the entire manufacturing landscape on the planet, this would require a sustained effort over a long period of time and the harmonization of a wide variety of moving parts. Nevertheless, two developments that could go a long way toward streamlining this process – larger production batches and the ability to recycle the raw materials used as inputs – have received a huge boost from Roboze’s combination of ARGO 1000 with Hypermelt.
Images courtesy of Roboze
