Digital manufacturing matches moulding
A
Stratasys product story
Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team
Aug 11, 2008
Machine is designed to serve growing trend in low-volume manufacturing, especially in the automotive, aerospace, consumer product and heavy industry markets.
Stratasys has begun commercial shipments of its new FDM 900mc direct digital manufacturing machine.
The company says it has taken a record number of orders for its large-format machines.
"We pre-sold 17 units - much more than expected", says FDM Product Manager, Patrick Robb.
"We underestimated early demand for a system used in DDM applications".
Historically, Stratasys additive fabrication machines were used strictly for rapid prototyping, but the 900mc was developed specifically for use in direct digital manufacturing (DDM) applications.
The machine is designed to serve this growing trend in low-volume manufacturing, especially in the automotive, aerospace, consumer product and heavy industry markets.
All 17 units will be used in direct digital manufacturing applications for either end-use parts or fabrication and assembly tools, and some of them will double in high-end functional prototyping applications.
"The FDM 900mc programme is exceeding Stratasys expectations in several ways", says Robb: "in sales, in prospect interest, and in machine performance".
The 900mc development programme was driven to produce high standards of accuracy and repeatability.
With a confidence factor of greater than 99%, the 900mc has a accuracy rating of +/-0.127mm (or +/-0.0015mm/mm whichever is greater).
"This rivals injection moulding for accuracy and repeatability", says Robb.
"For low-volume production, it's a more cost-effective technique than traditional manufacturing".
The Stratasys quality department completed an FDM 900mc accuracy study, using three FDM 900mc machines, and building 144 standard test parts with 27 measurements per part, for a total of 3888 measured dimensions.
Results revealed that dimensions were 99.9% in specification, or in other words, only one in one thousand measurements did not fall within the specification.
"The FDM 900mc sets a new benchmark for Stratasys high-end system performance in throughput, accuracy, repeatability and part quality", says product marketing manager, Fred Fischer.
"This machine's precision lets it rival any competing rapid technology process as well as traditional processes for low volume manufacturing and prototyping".
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