AdvancedTek Part of the Week – 7/18/16
No ears, guns or cars – just real parts and real applications.
Today’s Part of the Week is from a customer that wanted to produce parts with a living hinge. Historically, FDM 3D printed materials were not capable of producing good representations of living hinge designs. This is because all of the available materials were amorphous which generally have minimal elongation at break values. This has changed since the introduction of Nylon 12, Stratasys’ first semi-crystalline material offering.
The printed part in the picture and in the video link below, show how customers like this one can use the new Nylon 12 material to test and evaluate living hinge designs. Along with other great material properties, Nylon 12 has the best elongation at break of any of our materials and also offers the most strength between layers of any of the FDM materials. According to Stratasys’ Materials Team, Nylon 12 printed parts are approximately 96% isotropic, demonstrating the unique capabilities of this material for toughness regardless of the build orientation.
Nylon 12 is offered on the Fortus 380, 450 and 900 systems and can also be added to the legacy Fortus 360 and 400 systems as material package upgrade. Nylon 12 offers our customers a unique set of properties that help solve problems in both design and manufacturing support applications. Please contact AdvancedTek if you’d like additional information about the benefits of direct access to 3D printing and additive manufacturing.
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Posted by Matt Havekost, AdvancedTek Director of Sales – Additive Manufacturing