Covestro and voxeljet announce collaboration to advance volume production of additive manufacturing

Materials company Covestro and industrial 3D printer manufacturer voxeljet are collaborating to develop a material-machine combination for economical high-volume additive manufacturing
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With high-speed sintering (HSS), voxeljet combines the advantages of two existing additive manufacturing technologies: selective laser sintering and binder jetting, enabling both the performance of SLS parts and the productivity of binder jetting
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After jointly developing and qualifying thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) powders for high-speed sintering, the two companies' collaboration has gone one step further, providing a seamless material-process solution for batch manufacturing of customers' specific applications
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Geoff Gardner, Innovation Director at Covestro, said: “Typically, materials and processing technologies operate separately in the value chain, and customers have to figure out how to make them work
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Together with voxeljet, we want to eliminate what we think is a part of the production floor.
A barrier to adopting additive manufacturing
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Due to its size and speed, coupled with constant layer printing times, high-speed sintering offers manufacturers an economical mass production solution
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Seamless Material-Process Solutions

voxeljet will leverage its knowledge of its large-format VX1000HSS printer platform, as well as Covestro's expertise in designing functional materials, to develop a seamless material-process solution that can be used in mass production
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James Reeves, global director of polymer sintering (HSS) at voxeljet, added: “This is a collaboration between two companies that believe in a truly close collaboration across the entire additive manufacturing ecosystem .

The potential for HSS to process specialty powder materials is enormous
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By offering our customers a choice of materials, we accelerate their access to groundbreaking products
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Possible materials being considered by the two companies are TPU, which is ideal for footwear and cushioning applications, as well as thermoplastic elastomers (TPE), polybutylene terephthalate (PBT) and polypropylene (PP)
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The collaboration with voxeljet involves scaling up new materials on the large-scale industrial manufacturing facility VX1000HSS, currently available through voxeljet's early access test program
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