Stratasys Ltd., the 3D printing and additive manufacturing solutions company, took a significant step into low-volume, continuous production using additive technology when it unveiled a new product under development – the Stratasys Continuous Build 3D Demonstrator – at the RAPID + TCT Show in Pittsburgh. Commercial product availability has not yet been announced.
The new platform is composed of a modular unit with multiple 3D print cells working simultaneously and driven by a central, cloud-based architecture. To set new standards in additive manufacturing throughput, the Stratasys Continuous Build 3D Demonstrator is designed to produce parts in a continuous stream with only minor operator intervention, automatically ejecting completed parts and commencing new ones.
Each 3D print cell can produce a different job to help enable mass customization projects. Additional cells can be added at any time to the scalable platform to increase production capacity as demand requires. Automatic queue management, load balancing and architecture redundancy further lead to accelerated throughput as jobs are automatically routed to available print cells. If a single print cell fails, the job will be automatically rerouted to the next available cell.
Target applications include education RP labs and environments that can benefit from zero tooling production and from a zero inventory supply chain.
“The Stratasys Continuous Build 3D Demonstrator is an important milestone in the company’s long term vision to make additive manufacturing a viable solution for volume production environments - says Scott Crump, Stratasys Co-founder and Chief Innovation Officer -. It combines our FDM print quality, GrabCAD control and monitoring, and a new multi-cell, scalable architecture to create a breakthrough manufacturing platform”.
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15 May 2017
