3D Printing for Direct Digital Manufacturing

The 3D Printing for Direct Digital Manufacturing is great for:

Stratasys Fortus Production Series 3D Printers build the most durable, stable, repeatable parts in the industry. With accuracy that rivals injection molding and an array of real thermoplastic materials providing more opportunities in low-volume production, customized end-use parts and factory automation.

Designers and manufacturing engineers are free to optimize parts with organic shapes and complex geometries, including hollow interiors and negative draft. Traditional tooling constraints don’t apply in the world of DDM. 

FDM & Direct Digital Manufacturing

Fused Deposition Modelling (FDM) is an additive manufacturing process that builds plastic parts layer by layer, using data from CAD files. This allows manufacturers very quickly build end use parts with the FDM process potentially providing components that meet the mechanical requirements for many plastic components. With a wide range of materials available including ABS, Polycarbonate, Nylon and ULTEM.

ULTEM 9085 material is a strong, lightweight thermoplastic widely used in aircraft interiors. The material is heat resistant up to 320° F (160° C) and is inherently flame-retardant, offering full FST (flame, smoke and toxicity) compliance, including 55 kw min/m2 heat release and peak heat release using the OSU test method.

Achieving tight tolerances of 0.003 in. (0.0762 mm) FDM provides substantially better dimensional accuracy than a urethane casting process for instance and can eliminate the need for  finishing some cast manufactured items. The temperature rating and burn data for ULTEM 9085 frequently surpasses other materials.

Fortus Production 3D Printers

The Stratasys 3D Production Series brings world-class prototyping, tooling and digital manufacturing to your designers and engineers. The Fortus 250mc is the most compact and affordable machine, offering advanced 3D manufacturing capabilities in an office-friendly footprint. Fortus 900mc 3D Production System offer the widest range of Fused Deposition Modeling materials, including high performance thermoplastics, for amazingly durable, accurate parts as large as 914 x 610 x 914 mm (36 x 24 x 36 in.) with predictable mechanical, chemical and thermal properties. The Fortus 400mc and Fortus 360mc offers mid size parts in a choice of 9 materials or 3 materials respectively.