Prodways P1000, the First sub-$100,000 Industrial SLS 3D Printer with PA6 Material
At the opening of Rapid, the unrivaled additive manufacturing event, from May 16 to 19 in Orlando, Florida, Prodways, a subsidiary of Groupe Gorgé, presented its new industrial laser sintering printer, the Prodways P1000 (Pro Maker), and announced the signing of a strategic partnership with the leading chemical company, BASF, for the marketing of their new PA6 laser sintering powder.
The development of this new printer is the result of the purchase of Norge Systems in March 2015 combined with the Prodways R&D teams’ expertise in powder sintering technology. It extends the current “Prodways powered by Farsoon” range in the industrial segment. ProMaker P1000 demonstrates Prodways’ ambition to make industrial plastic powder laser sintering performance accessible to a wider market in order to facilitate innovation and the development of new applications.
The new ProMaker P1000 printer boasts a wide manufacturing platform for printing large items and the added advantage of professional productivity. It offers excellent thermal stability, thanks to its smart temperature control system, and benefits from a very fine laser for high-resolution items with optimized mechanical properties. In addition, the ProMaker P1000 offers new features developed specially for this printer, including a completely new modular coating system, enabling optimal control of the powder distribution.
The ProMaker P1000 benefits from Prodways’ wide range of materials with high recyclability rates, as well as the strategy of being open to other materials, which Prodways applies to its full range of printers in order to facilitate customer innovation and the development of new applications. The ProMaker P1000 will be available at the end of 2016 at a special launch price of under €100,000 (excl. tax). It extends Prodways’ range of industrial laser sintering printers and confirms Prodways’ strategy of opening up new fields of application in additive manufacturing by addressing new professional user segments.
Thanks to the partnership with BASF, Prodways integrates the brand new PA6 polymer powder – announced at the end of 2015 and developed by BASF jointly with LSS, Hunan Farsoon Tech Ltd and Varia 3D – into its portfolio of laser sintering materials. BASF’s development of this new PA6 material for 3D printing by laser sintering technology is a major breakthrough for the industrial sector.
It offers new possibilities for the series production of parts, for example functional components, with more complex structures and more customized designs, but with the similar mechanical resistance, hardness and thermal stability properties as parts produced today in PA6 via traditional injection techniques. PA6 is a widely-used material today, in particular in the automotive and electronics industries, where it can replace metal in order to produce lighter-weight parts and reduce production costs for massive parts, hot engine parts and electronic components. This new material meets the requirements of applications in all areas of industry for a wide range of components and machine parts.
