From medical visors to components for spacecraft, 3D printing continues to transform our understanding of how things are made. Yet, there is relatively little authoritative industry insight into the by-products of additive manufacturing processes.

How can manufacturers overcame the gap between industry-grade additive manufacturing and desktop 3D printing?

Israel – Additive manufacturing specialist, Azoth, has received XJet’s first Carmel 1400M metal AM System — the first metal and ceramic material jetting system in the world. Repeatable, quality parts suitable for industrial production were the main reasons cited by Azoth for the investment.

USA — 3D printing company Sigma Labs has published its financial and operational results for the fourth quarter and full year 2021. According to these figures, revenues increased by 105 percent to 1.7 million dollars for the full year of 2021 as compared to 0.8 million dollars for the full year of 2020 due to increased Printrite 3D unit sales.

UK — Intech Additive Solutions partners with and licenses Polygonica from Machine Works to enhance their Metal 3D Printing Ecosystem.

UK — Agemaspark won the Digital Engineering/Technology Award for their innovative work using 3D printing to develop a new technique to improve the efficiency of a mould tool by as much as 20 percent and reducing cycle times for multi-impression mould tools.

France — 3D Printing company Stratasys has announced that it is has strengthened its network of partners in France. In conjunction with this expansion, the company has also launched a dedicated e-store to provide faster and easier ordering of materials and consumables for customers.

3D printing solutions manufacturer BCN3D has announced a new 3D printing technology to advance alongside its FFF solutions: Viscous Lithography Manufacturing. According to the company, this novel technology surpasses stoppers such as initial investments in money or space, mechanical properties not up to standard, or incapability of large batch production.

Polymer printing specialist Stratasys announced the continued expansion of the Grab CAD Software Partner Program with new partners Oqton and Riven. Oqton is a cloud-based manufacturing operating system company based in Ghent, Belgium; and Riven provides 3D reality intelligence for digital manufacturing, based in Berkeley, USA.

3D printing company Stratasys introduced a new water-soluble support material, WSS150, for two Polyjet 3D printers — the Stratasys J35 Pro and Stratasys J55 Prime. WSS150 allows users to remove the support material from their prints easily and hands-free using tap water or a conventional dishwasher with no additional chemicals.