SLM Solutions Launches Free Float Software Solution

SLM Solutions launches a product called Free Float. The latest addition to the company's portfolio now empowers the creation of metal components with previously impossible designs and productivity, reducing overall material usage and minimizing the end-part cost to achieve industrial-scale production. 

“With the launch of Free Float, you can design bolder, freer, and with fewer limitations,” Sam O'Leary, CEO of SLM Solutions, says. “Today you can work faster and more productively. Today you can go to the place that will take you to the next level. Now that's disruption.”

The basic subscription for the software comes free of charge: “We're not messing around,” O'Leary says. “Free Float is a game-changer that will enable success and shouldn't be limited regarding accessibility.”

Support structures have puzzled the company's chief engineer, Dieter Schwarze, from the conception of the SLM technology. Since the 1990s, support structures have been an inherent part of the 3D printing process. However, often, the design of the main component was limited due to the support structures needed to build them, and support structures could be a substantial section of the overall part volume. Supports also need to be removed later during the post-processing phase and increase material usage, which by default increases cost. These factors prompted Schwarze to wonder, “Is a support-free future viable?”

In 2017, a first glimpse at what would become Free Float was discovered as a byproduct of a research project. After much research and development, Free Float was born. Today, its vector technology establishes thermal management that decreases net build time while simultaneously enhancing part quality, especially the case in overhang areas, which can now free float, like the branches of a tree.

At the forefront of its design was useability: Its three profiles, low, medium and high, easily give the desired outcome. In the words of its product manager, Benjamin Haas, “You do not need a Ph.D. to use it.”

And, following SLM Solutions' open architecture philosophy, Free Float was designed to be retrofittable on many previously built systems, including the SLM 280 Production Series, the SLM 280 2.0, the SLM 500, the SLM 800 and the NXG Xll 600. 

For more information on this technology, click here.

To re-watch the launch film, click here.

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