--- title: "A new Airtech era is on the horizon" url: https://www.voxelmatters.com/a-new-airtech-era-is-on-the-horizon/ date: 2024-12-23 modified: 2024-12-30 lang: en author: "Edward Wakefield" description: "Airtech Advanced Materials Group is one of the leading producers of materials for LFAM applications. It was born as a result of the leadership of Gregory Haye, who is the..." categories: - "Executive Interviews" - "LFAM" - "Pellet extrusion" - "Sponsored" - "Sustainability" tags: - "Featured" image: https://www.voxelmatters.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Formnext_2024_Booth-640x508.jpeg word_count: 1015 --- # A new Airtech era is on the horizon [Airtech Advanced Materials Group](https://www.voxelmatters.directory/company/airtech/) is one of the leading producers of materials for LFAM applications. It was born as a result of the leadership of Gregory Haye, who is the Director of Additive Manufacturing. As we learned from our conversation with Gregory at this year’s Formnext, [the company’s role in the AM industry](https://www.voxelmatters.com/airtech-and-kraussmaffei-qualify-of-dahltram-resins/) is about to evolve into something new - as the result of a strong, steady foundation, and multiple new opportunities for expansion. ## An LFAM market overview “[When walking the halls] you definitely see an ecosystem around LFAM strengthening and growing. All our partners here are exhibiting their products and are seeing growth in their business. I think this gives some confidence to the market, and to the customers. It shows that this market is viable, and that this technology is viable,” said Gregory. “I’ve seen this ecosystem evolve. Even at Formnext - in the past two, three years - it’s getting stronger, especially when it comes to LFAM.” More specifically, Gregory sees a notable increase in LFAM for end-use, especially around design and architecture applications. When probed about how relevant these applications are for a company like [Airtech, which is known for its more industrial](https://www.voxelmatters.com/airtech-and-ascent-aerospace-accelerate-am-tooling-in-aerospace-and-defense/), tooling-based applications, Gregory noted that, as part of the company’s evolution, “the eight materials we've launched here are all specifically not for tooling or industrial applications. So, more aligned than you might realize. We've spent the better part of this past year focusing on new market segment growth, and new materials appropriate for them.” ![A new Airtech era is on the horizon. The company’s AM division is now ripe and ready for sustainable expansion.](https://www.voxelmatters.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Formnext_2024_-Breton_Car-scaled.jpeg) Airtech’s customer base is noteworthy. These far-reaching, well-established relationships are partly what makes the company’s journey into new market segments feasible. After having proven its ability to support demanding industrial applications, Gregory feels it is ready to move onto phase two - leveraging all the things they’ve learned and proven in the past five years and applying the same level of confidence and attention to quality and product to the realm of high-performance structures, art components, architectural elements, furniture, etc. The decisions around which new materials to develop have been made based on the feedback from Airtech close relationships with machine OEMs. “They're the tip of the spear, right? If there's no machine sale, then there's no resin sold. We make sure we support them on the applications development too. So, if they come to us and say, ‘Hey, we have this project and we're trying to develop this application’, then that’s a hint to me. If I see a trend, then I need to do something,” he said. “Again, its organic growth, either being pulled by the machine makers or the customers coming to us, being familiar with what we've done, either together with other machine makers, or our own service activities in the market on the tooling and industrial side of things.” ## Sustainability Of course, when you are producing and distributing so much material each year, the need to do so sustainably becomes even more apparent and important. ![A new Airtech era is on the horizon. The company’s AM division is now ripe and ready for sustainable expansion.](https://www.voxelmatters.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Formnext_2024_Filaments-scaled.jpeg) [Airtech’s new materials](https://www.voxelmatters.com/airtech-paves-way-for-more-sustainable-and-efficient-aerospace-manufacturing/) are all driven by different requirements. For example, when producing for cure tooling, temperature resilience needs to be considered, and coefficient thermal expansion needs to be managed. This affects the tolerance of the part that's cured off of the tool. Other properties may be less important, and it is therefore a matter of trade. “When you start talking about furniture, architectural, and other direct-use parts, some of the properties matter less, so we can prioritize performance of other attributes that we need. It could be overall ultimate strength of the material, UV resistance, flame retardancy, colors, or sustainability.” The company has been conducting on-going recycling pilot projects, where recycled versions of materials that are industrially relevant and can perform to the same standards as those that are currently being used. At the event, Gregory estimated that around half of the LFAM machines in the building were printing with the company’s recycled PETG with glass fiber. Initially, this material was only offered in a gray, but now, in line with its more aesthetically-driven ventures, and driven by customer demand, Airtech has begun producing this material in different colors, including unpigmented, ‘raw flake’ mixed colors that come directly from the recycling source - adding to the ‘organic’ design of the part. ## Phase two Starting next year, we can expect our perception of Airtech to shift towards something more creative, and more application-focused. “We want to shift people's thinking of Airtech. We came in strong and hard on the tooling and industrial applications. Now, we want people to know that we're [more than just tooling and composites](https://www.voxelmatters.com/markforged-eos-airtech-among-the-key-top-10-companies-in-composites-am/). We want people to recognize us and utilize us for their various applications.” ![A new Airtech era is on the horizon. The company’s AM division is now ripe and ready for sustainable expansion.](https://www.voxelmatters.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/As-printed_Dahltram-T-110-Clear_Airtech-1-scaled.jpeg) In line with the company’s future artistic, architectural, and furniture applications, it has also recently released its transparent co-polyester T110 material - which is particularly promising for lighting (skylight, for example). “Basically, we are giving people a new color to paint with. I am excited to see what some of our customers are going to do with it,” said Gregory. “Sometimes we get so focused on the more clinical things, the engineering things, that we may lose sight of creativity. So, sometimes we have to focus on providing a solution and working with our customers and partners to use their creative minds to apply our solution in a new application.” Moving forward, we can expect to see more abstract case studies from Airtech. “We're going to make sure we do some things to stir the pot a bit. We have a lot of internal applications we're going to be working on and trying to demonstrate. Doing things differently involves us also pushing the machine makers and pushing the software makers,” said Gregory. “We started this business unit five years ago from an empty building and blue sky. We've kind of hit the ‘established’ stage now - we've seen solid growth year over year and a good trajectory. Now we have the ability to start this ‘phase two’ of the journey.” *This article was originally published in VoxelMatters’ VM Focus Sustainability AM eBook. Read or download the full eBook for free at [this link](https://www.voxelmatters.com/am-for-sustainability-am-focus-2024-ebook/).*