This week the additive manufacturing industry gathers in Frankfurt, Germany for the annual Formnext tradeshow. In addition to the large and established enterprises are the winners of the 2018 Formnext startup challenge. 3D Printing Industry caught up with these companies to find out more.
3D Printing Industry: When was your company founded and where are operations based?
Edouard Moens de Hase, CEO of Aerosint: The research started in January 2015 as part of the Belgian startup studio Make.it. Aerosint was founded in September 2016 and operations are based in Liège, Belgium. Today Aerosint employs 7 engineers (2 phd’s) with complementary skills.
3D Printing Industry: What does your company do?
Matthias Hick, CTO of Aerosint: We have developed an alternative recoater for powder bed fusion printing processes. Traditional recoaters like blades (hard and soft) or rollers can only spread single material layers. Our recoater can create multi-material powder layers. The Aerosint recoater relies on the high definition deposition of powder voxels. A bit like a 2D printer is depositing precisely ink droplets, our recoater does the same but with dry powder voxels. Our recoater works with polymers, metals and ceramics. The applications for such a recoater are therefore pletorious.
A multi-material recoater like this, combined with the right multi-material sintering strategy, makes multi-material powder fusion 3D printing at reach. At Aerosint we strongly believe that multimaterial additive manufacturing is the logical evolution of a technology that has been around, with very little innovation, for over 30 years.
It’s time to make powder bed fusion multimaterial!
3D Printing Industry: How does your company fit into the additive manufacturing ecosystem?
Edouard Moens de Hase, CEO of Aerosint: We are focussing on the recoating technology and the multi-material applications. We position ourselves as the experts of multimaterial additive manufacturing. Today we can integrate our recoater in existing SLS / SLM systems of companies having an interest in multimaterial applications and looking for the supporting technology to do R&D.
3D Printing Industry: What are you hoping to gain from exhibiting at formnext 2018?
Edouard Moens de Hase, CEO of Aerosint: We want to gain visibility on our technology and establish partnerships with machine manufacturers and industrial end-users with interesting multimaterial applications.
We basically want everybody to know Aerosint exists and can support multimaterial developments.
3D Printing Industry: How would you describe the roadmap for your enterprise over the coming years?
Matthias Hick, CTO of Aerosint: Today we integrate our recoater in existing SLS / SLM printers for value demonstration. We do this for industrial end-users, R&D centers or Universities having a strong desire to develop multimaterial applications.
As the technology further develops we will address even more opportunities in the multimaterial landscape but also in other industries.
3D Printing Industry: Is there anything else you would like our readers to know about?
Edouard Moens de Hase, CEO of Aerosint: With the Aerosint recoater, multimaterial is not wishful thinking anymore. Multimaterial will allow parts optimization and functionalization like no other manufacturing technology is capable of. Just think about the potential of integrating conductivity in parts or printing material gradients combining a rigid with a soft material or being able to locally reinforce a part. Those are just a few examples of what a multimaterial technology like ours could achieve.
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