Airtech Superior Supplies Group is among the main producers of supplies for LFAM purposes. It was born because of the management of Gregory Haye, who’s the Director of Additive Manufacturing. As we realized from our dialog with Gregory at this yr’s Formnext, the corporate’s position within the AM trade is about to evolve into one thing new – as the results of a powerful, regular basis, and a number of new alternatives for growth.
An LFAM market overview
“[When walking the halls] you positively see an ecosystem round LFAM strengthening and rising. All our companions listed below are exhibiting their merchandise and are seeing development of their enterprise. I believe this provides some confidence to the market, and to the purchasers. It exhibits that this market is viable, and that this expertise is viable,” mentioned Gregory. “I’ve seen this ecosystem evolve. Even at Formnext – up to now two, three years – it’s getting stronger, particularly on the subject of LFAM.”
Extra particularly, Gregory sees a notable enhance in LFAM for end-use, particularly round design and structure purposes. When probed about how related these purposes are for an organization like Airtech, which is understood for its extra industrial, tooling-based purposes, Gregory famous that, as a part of the corporate’s evolution, “the eight supplies we’ve launched listed below are all particularly not for tooling or industrial purposes. So, extra aligned than you may notice. We’ve spent the higher a part of this previous yr specializing in new market phase development, and new supplies applicable for them.”
Airtech’s buyer base is noteworthy. These far-reaching, well-established relationships are partly what makes the corporate’s journey into new market segments possible. After having confirmed its means to help demanding industrial purposes, Gregory feels it is able to transfer onto section two – leveraging all of the issues they’ve realized and confirmed up to now 5 years and making use of the identical stage of confidence and a spotlight to high quality and product to the realm of high-performance buildings, artwork parts, architectural components, furnishings, and so forth.
The selections round which new supplies to develop have been made primarily based on the suggestions from Airtech shut relationships with machine OEMs. “They’re the tip of the spear, proper? If there’s no machine sale, then there’s no resin offered. We make sure that we help them on the purposes improvement too. So, if they arrive to us and say, ‘Hey, we have now this challenge and we’re making an attempt to develop this utility’, then that’s a touch to me. If I see a development, then I must do one thing,” he mentioned. “Once more, its natural development, both being pulled by the machine makers or the purchasers coming to us, being acquainted with what we’ve accomplished, both along with different machine makers, or our personal service actions available in the market on the tooling and industrial facet of issues.”
Sustainability
After all, when you find yourself producing and distributing a lot materials every year, the necessity to take action sustainably turns into much more obvious and necessary.
Airtech’s new supplies are all pushed by totally different necessities. For instance, when producing for remedy tooling, temperature resilience must be thought of, and coefficient thermal growth must be managed. This impacts the tolerance of the half that’s cured off of the software. Different properties could also be much less necessary, and it’s subsequently a matter of commerce. “If you begin speaking about furnishings, architectural, and different direct-use components, a few of the properties matter much less, so we are able to prioritize efficiency of different attributes that we want. It might be general final power of the fabric, UV resistance, flame retardancy, colours, or sustainability.”
The corporate has been conducting on-going recycling pilot initiatives, the place recycled variations of supplies which can be industrially related and may carry out to the identical requirements as these which can be at the moment getting used. On the occasion, Gregory estimated that round half of the LFAM machines within the constructing had been printing with the corporate’s recycled PETG with glass fiber. Initially, this materials was solely provided in a grey, however now, in step with its extra aesthetically-driven ventures, and pushed by buyer demand, Airtech has begun producing this materials in numerous colours, together with unpigmented, ‘uncooked flake’ combined colours that come instantly from the recycling supply – including to the ‘natural’ design of the half.
Part two
Beginning subsequent yr, we are able to count on our notion of Airtech to shift in the direction of one thing extra artistic, and extra application-focused. “We wish to shift individuals’s pondering of Airtech. We got here in robust and arduous on the tooling and industrial purposes. Now, we wish individuals to know that we’re extra than simply tooling and composites. We wish individuals to acknowledge us and make the most of us for his or her varied purposes.”
According to the corporate’s future creative, architectural, and furnishings purposes, it has additionally just lately launched its clear co-polyester T110 materials – which is especially promising for lighting (skylight, for instance). “Mainly, we’re giving individuals a brand new colour to color with. I’m excited to see what a few of our clients are going to do with it,” mentioned Gregory. “Generally we get so targeted on the extra scientific issues, the engineering issues, that we might lose sight of creativity. So, typically we have now to deal with offering an answer and dealing with our clients and companions to make use of their artistic minds to use our resolution in a brand new utility.”
Shifting ahead, we are able to count on to see extra summary case research from Airtech. “We’re going to verify we do some issues to stir the pot a bit. We’ve lots of inner purposes we’re going to be engaged on and making an attempt to show. Doing issues in another way includes us additionally pushing the machine makers and pushing the software program makers,” mentioned Gregory. “We began this enterprise unit 5 years in the past from an empty constructing and blue sky. We’ve sort of hit the ‘established’ stage now – we’ve seen strong development yr over yr and an excellent trajectory. Now we have now the flexibility to begin this ‘section two’ of the journey.”
This text was initially printed in VoxelMatters’ VM Focus Sustainability AM eBook. Learn or obtain the complete eBook free of charge at this hyperlink.