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What is FDM 2.0?

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FDM 2.0

FDM 2.0 is our philosophy to make FDM a true industrial grade and affordable B2B partner in small scale production, mass customisation and rapid tooling / prototyping applications requiring on-demand, high quality and certifiable parts in a wide range of (recycled) materials. 

Let us introduce you to the core of our philosophy.

 

Excited? Let’s get in touch to discover more and what this can mean for your project. 

Perfect feedstock control

The basis of good FDM extrusion is having full control of your feedstock material from feeder to nozzle. Current available technologies have sufficient control to be able to printed parts but in order to print excellent parts and high speeds, full material control is essential.

Where traditional friction based pinch wheel mechanisms have been the standard for years, they do feature the inherent problem of slipping through the filament as a function of back pressure. This slippage will lead to under extrusion and thus weaker parts as layer bonding decreases with less material output than required as illustrated in these cross sections. Under extrusion becomes increasingly pronounced with higher printing speeds as the hot-end will reach its melting capacity starts to cause more and more back-pressure. Evident from the graph is that the VXS-150, our first product in the FDM 2.0 product line is able overcome this issue and retain extrusion volume along the entire range of volumetric flow speeds leading to consistently strong parts up to 90% of theoretical injection moulding strength.

Filament driven FDM systems have the benefit of doing retractions of the feedstock material to temporarily stop extrusion during non-printing moves. These retraction are absolutely essential in creating an aesthetically pleasing end-product finish without having to post process. Not being able to temporarily stop the extrusion process leads to material dripping from the nozzle (oozing) and deposits on the printed object. These deposits are usually present in the form of fine strings in the open areas of a print but they can also accumulate leading to serious deformations that can possibly block the movement of the extrusion head.

A typical problem with conventional extrusion systems is that they are limited in both speed and quantity due to their design. Performing a fast retraction on a friction based system again causes slip (in the other direction) meaning too little material is retracted. When the extruder feeds back to restart printing, this will cause a spike in back pressure and will damage the filament. Performing this action repetitively causes so much damages to the feedstock in a particular point that the feeder starts ‘grinding through’ leading to a complete stop of extrusion. In FDM 2.0, it doesn’t matter what movement of feedstock is needed, it must be done at any time without limitations our failures.

The viscosity of a polymer is a function of both temperature as well as pressure. By increasing pressure in the hot-end, less temperature is required to create the same viscosity. Introducing a pressure element in the 3D printing process allows the user to optimize the printing temperature based on the speed or quality required. This is beneficial as a lower temperatures causes lower rates of thermal degradation of thermoplastics by depolymerisation, scission and oxidation. Like in injection moulding, pressure is an elemental component of extrusion in FDM 2.0. 

High speed extrusion control

Recycled and industrial material compatibility

Additive manufacturing is already redefining the manufacturing landscape being able to efficiently use resources to create highly complex parts. In addition, its on-demand one-off production character has the potential to shorten supply chains and bring production closes to the customer reducing our carbon footprint. We truly believe FDM doesn’t stop there and also has great potential to create circular products as well thus being even more efficient with the resources we use. 

 

The baseline of FDM 2.0 is to fully close the product life cycle and create a fully circular and wasteless system. It needs a system that is able to handle recycled materials and is even capable of instantly recycling failed or old printed parts.

 

[illustration of circular printing, add old products an outside stream]

Smart Motion control

3D printers are generally ‘ stupid’  machines that execute a program based on user input like CNC machines have done for ages. When something unexpected occurs during printing, it requires user monitoring and response to save a print or possibly prevent damage to the machine. In FDM 2.0 the 3D printer is a smart machine that has a fully closed feedback loop and is capable of adjusting the printing process when unexpected events occur salvaging valuable prints and materials and greatly increasing printer utilization.

 

[illustration to be decided]

upgrade to FDM 2.0

Print faster, more reliable and stronger with our VXS-150 kit