A new toolkit that could speed up the printing process of Raise3D FFF 3D Printers

If you’ve already printed an object on an FFF 3D printer, you’re probably already familiar with the long wait that comes with the fabrication process. For those who are looking to produce customized products, or small batch productions, speed is often the deal breaker that prevents them from using FFF 3D printing.

This is a challenge that FFF 3D Printer manufacturer Raise3D has decided to address for its Pro3 Series 3D printers. To do so, Raise3D has developed a Hyper Speed Upgrade Kit (HUK3), partially protected by the company’s existing patents.  Compatible with the RMF500 professional 3D printer released last year, the manufacturer claims that the new tool can achieve a speed 3.8 times faster than the current best professional printer available in the market.

The challenge was never to just instruct an FFF printer to print at a higher speed. Telling an FFF 3D printer to print at high speed is quite simple, and most manufacturers and users have tried it at some point. The challenge was to be able to do so in while keeping the same quality of layer adhesion and surface finish, in addition to the structural stability of the whole printer, the company explains in a press release.

The company has already assessed the performance of the HUK3 on the Pro3 series:

*The results above take into account the 0.4mm nozzle and 0.2 mm layer height

As far as productivity is concerned, the manufacturer explains that the more it increases, the more it should have an impact on traditional manufacturing processes, like injection molding and CNC, in particular when the part produced may be subject to frequent or regular design changes.

The filaments’ flowability, a major challenge in this development

In FFF, the deposited material lines are fused by the residual heat of the material and the pressure of the moving nozzle. However, when the printing speed increases by a factor of 4, the filament has very short time to melt from solid to a molten state, leaving the extruded material in a semi-molten state, with a hot shell and cold core, which can cause nozzle clogging and poor bonding quality between layers. Raise3D and their partners worked together to solve this challenge and is now launching two new filament lines for high-speed printing: the Hyper Speed and the Hyper Core.

The Hyper Speed is comprised of the more widespread filaments, while the Hyper Core is oriented towards more professional and industrial filaments, such as fiber-reinforced materials for industrial and end-use parts production and heavy-duty applications such as tooling, jigs & fixtures.

Both filament lines are optimized with balanced molecular weight and flowability, which allows them to have an excellent interlayer bonding quality and Z-direction strength, a smooth surface quality, and absolutely zero warpage, making it perfectly suitable for many functional parts.

The Hyper Speed line will initially have available PLA and ABS, but other materials, like PETG, PC, ASA, ESD-safe, among others, are already in the pipeline to be released. During 2023, the Hyper Core line will also launch its first filament, PPA CF, which is a carbon fiber-reinforced composite filament with superior heat resistance, strength, and stiffness. To enhance the number of materials available for their customers, Raise3D will now invite filament manufacturers to join a specific new stage of their Open Filament Program (OFP), focused on high speed filaments.

The HUK3 includes software upgrades, 2 high-flowrate Pro3 hot ends, a smart auto frequency calibrator, a spool of Hyper Speed PLA, and a spool of Hyper Speed ABS.

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