Direct Digital Manufacturing System Improves Part Quality

By DE Editors

Stratasys (Minneapolis, MN) announced its new direct digital manufacturing (DDM) and prototyping system—the FDM 400mc, which offers improvements in accuracy, repeatability and material properties, and increases speed and flexibility. Plus, the FDM 400mc includes Insight 6.0.

Improvements in the design and manufacturing of the extrusion head gantry produces parts with a higher tolerance, and offers greater repeatability. Combined with stable thermoplastics, testing shows that the FDM 400mc maintains  repeatable performance when manufacturing multiple identical parts in different runs, at various platform positions, and on various machines.

The FDM 400mc is introduced with a new material—ABS-M30, whose mechanical properties are up to 67 percent stronger than standard Stratasys ABS, thus expanding functional capabilities.

Parts manufactured from PC-ABS parts are up to 17 percent stronger when built on the FDM 400mc, and PC parts are up to 29 percent stronger. The FDM 400mc has a build-speed increase of 29 percent.

Users can customize their system, selecting the material packages and build-envelope size as needed. This reduces the system purchase price because users pay only for their needed envelope size and material capabilities.

In conjunction with FDM 400mc, Stratasys has also just released Insight v. 6.0—an enhanced version of its preprocessing software that contains new production scheduling programs for direct digital manufacturing.

While FDM TEAM is a paid option of new Insight version 6.0, FDM Control Center comes standard with Insight. Both applications combine multiple machine job queues into a single, easy-to-use interface. TEAM lets users with several or many machines optimize job scheduling for direct digital manufacturing.

With TEAM, all job queues appear on one screen in a Gantt chart format. TEAM has an enhanced interface that is intuitive and easy-to-operate, allowing users to drag and drop jobs for machine load balancing. In addition, blackout (non-working) times can be displayed to show real capacity. This feature omits new-job start times that couldn’t realistically occur because an operator isn’t available to remove a part and start a new job when the production floor is closed. This lets users optimize scheduling to ensure all machines are running at full capacity.

In addition to the TEAM option, Insight 6.0 offers other and a new interface called Control Center, which lets users add, delete, or change the priority of jobs in a system queue. The interface reports system status, such as part description, total build time, estimated time left, and amount of material required, among other things. In addition, users can view (but not modify) multiple system queues in a Gantt format.

Insight 6.0 will work with all current Stratasys FDM systems and is available as a free update for all existing FDM Maxum, FDM Titan, FDM Vantage, FDM 200mc, and ProdigyPlus customers on a valid warranty or maintenance contract. Current versions of Insight come standard with new FDM system purchase, but TEAM will remain a paid option to Insight. The new FDM 400mc includes Insight 6.0.

For more information about FDM 400mc and Insight 6.0 ([email protected]), contact Stratasys.

Sources: Press materials received from the company and additional information gleaned from the company’s website.