In January we had the pleasure of spending time with the team at BASF reviewing the market potential of their powder for HP 3D printers. Following our meeting we obtained some customer feedback and have since determined that it is time to bring TPU to the Canadian market. It’s one thing to have samples on hand, but to truly drive adoption customers need to see this material under their application. With the level of enthusiastic feedback that we received we understood the need to move quickly and with that in mind we will be ready this quarter to deliver demos and benchmarks at our Toronto showroom.

We expect that the driving factors for adoption will be the same as other materials.

• Decrease cost of manufacturing & manufacturing support
• Increase speed of product development and production
• Reduce risk in the supply chain & decrease cost of inventory
• Meet the demand for customization and light-weighting pressure

TPU however will allow us to technically go where our current materials don’t. TPU has plenty of applications but for now we will focus on the follow subsets – footwear/orthotics & industrial applications (jigs & fixtures). As illustrated below these industries are a very good fit for this material.

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Ultrasint TPU01 offers a robust set of material properties:

• Good flexibility
• High level of detail
• Good UV resistance
• Good hydrolysis resistance
• Excellent stability at cold temperatures
• Good chemical resistance
  

Furthermore, once you bring in additive manufacturing, you can use geometry to open a wide range of flexibility and hardness properties. This means one material can provide the hardness specs that usually requires 10 or more materials. This is not limited to different parts, you can vary the hardness across a single part opening up brand new applications. The headrest below is a single material and a single part. The outer layer has been smoothed using the AMT SF50 which we also have onsite for demo purposes.

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Download the full data sheet here.

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We’re excited to get started. You can reach out to me directly if you are interested in a demo part – Trevor Johnstone, tjohnstone@designfusion.com – and make sure to keep an eye out for upcoming events.