DELO, a manufacturer of industrial adhesives, has unveiled high-performance materials for Liquid Additive Manufacturing. Designed for industrial 3D Printing applications, these light-curing epoxy resins can deliver different functionalities, such as transparency, flexibility and conductivity in a printing process. Their isotropic strength in all printing directions makes it ideal or automotive and micro-electric applications.
The good news is that, the chemical basis of these materials can be adapted accordingly. The material mixes therefore can lead to hard and flexible materials. The company explains that to make this solution viable, several dispensing head must be installed on the printer and the printer’s parameters adapted to the liquid material used.
“Depending on the dispensing equipment, structures with wall thicknesses of less than 500 µm are possible. For complex structures with overhangs or undercuts, users can rely on a water-soluble support material”, said the company.
Another unique advantage is that both different dispensing heads and the curing lamps can be integrated into existing production lines – which leads to new possibilities for operators that would like to combine them to other manufacturing processes.
Moreover, given the equal distribution of the material in the build chamber, no heating or installation space is required. Not to mention that, thanks to UV light, it just takes a few seconds to cure the part.
Last but not least, DELO claims that the properties of the cured DELO materials are similar to high-performance plastics such as polyamide or PEEK. Given the increasing use of high-performance plastics in AM, this gives any operator a view on the capabilities it might expect from DELO’s liquid materials.
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