The Arburg Freeformer is able now to process standard PP (Braskem PP CP 393), as well as the specially developed Armat 12 support material. By qualifying standard PP and the new support material Armat 12, a significant breakthrough in extending the range of materials suitable for industrial additive manufacturing is made. The new support material is easily removable by dissolving it in a water bath. The process was shown on Formnext in Frankfurt to produce fully functional cable clips. The delicate yet durable structures have the click effect typically found in injection moulding.
Open system
One great advantage of ARBURG Plastic Freeforming (APF) is that the process can be adapted to the requirements at hand and not the other way around. In addition to amorphous standard granulates such as ABS, PA and PC, the material range includes many other materials. These include, for example, elastic TPE, the high-temperature plastic PEI, medical PLA, PC approved for the aviation industry, and now also semi-crystalline PP.
Cost effective production
The open system affords users independence: Freeformer customers can qualify their own original material and optimise the freely programmable process parameters specifically to the relevant application - starting from the settings for the geometrical slicing and temperature, through to discharge. All of this process data can be saved and analysed, and designs can be optimised quickly in order to produce prototypes and functional parts quickly and cost-effectively with the Freeformer. The better the process is configured, the better the quality of the part produced. Mechanical stress tests show that component densities of up to 95 percent and tensile strengths of up to 97 percent can be achieved control compared to injection moulding by means of adapted process.
