Currently at Euromold, Rachel has informed me that voxeljet’s latest 3D printer, VX2000, is “a BIIIIIIIG machine.” With its newest release, the German company has done what it does best, creating a large format printer with a build space of almost 2m3, making it one of the largest 3D printers available and the largest seen at Euromold. voxeljet’s CEO, Dr. Ingo Ederer, explained the reasoning behind their VX2000 model:
The VX2000 closes the big gap between the VX1000 with a design space of 0.3 cubic meters and the VX4000 with a design space of eight cubic meters. We now offer a balanced product range that enables us to provide our customers with an industrial 3D printer for any conceivable application area.
The company’s press release points out that the new machine is perfect for a variety of applications, including the building of equipment, parts for foundries and pump manufacturers, as well as for the automotive and aviation industries. Within the buildspace of 2060 x 1060 x 1000 mm, customers can produce items for large molds or limited quantities of small parts using all of the particle materials offered by voxeljet. The firm offers the following examples that the VX2000 is capable of printing: “216 water jacket cores measuring 490 x 210 x 80 mm in a job box in approximately two days of standard operations, …complex mechanical parts for the pump industry, [or] large-format molds for four Francis impellers with the dimensions 980 x 980 x 490 mm.” Below are some of the machine’s specs:
- an ink-jet head made up of up to 13,280 nozzles
- resolutions of up to 600 dpi
- layer thickness between 100 to 400 micrometers and a print width of 564 millimeters
- a speed of 45 liters per hour
- physical dimensions of 4.9 meters long by 2.6 meters wide
You may recognize voxeljet’s large format machines from our coverage of “The Digital Grotesque”, the first 3D-printed walk-in structure. Created by architects Michael Hansmeyer and Benjamin Dillenburger, the room is made up of 80 parts printed on a voxeljet VX4000 printer. “The Digital Grotesque” will be on display at the FRAC Centre in Orléans until February 2, 2014.
