Stratasys has revealed Kaercher has been utilising its PolyJet 3D printing technology for the prototyping of its cleaning system products.
The company has a portfolio of high-pressure cleaners, vacuum and steam cleaners, gantry car washes, water dispensers, and pump and watering systems for the home and harden, and in the design of its EASY!FORCE trigger gun for high pressure washers. These hose systems are regularly harnessed for the washing of vehicles, concrete, patio furniture and wood decking.
Kaercher has been harnessing 3D printing for around 20 years, bringing Stratasys FDM and PolyJet technology in-house to optimise the production process for many of its cleaning products. The patented design of the EASY!FORCE trigger gun features several different materials with varying rigidity and toughness, as well as complex geometries. In the design testing phase of the product development cycle, Kaercher turned to the Stratasys J750 platform, to take advantage of the machine’s aptitude in colour printing, and ability to produce parts in six different materials in one run. This helped Kaercher to test a variety of different design combinations, enabling the company to assess the best option more quickly and redistribute the time saved across the production floor.
The company believes its two decades’ worth of experience working with 3D printing enables its design and manufacturing teams to identify the right times to harness the technology, and achieving the results it has in the development of the EASY!FORCE trigger gun, is looking forward to exploring new applications with 3D printing.
“Traditionally, we would use milling or order individual standard parts to assemble prototypes for products. This not only took a long time, it also constrained our ability to create a true-to-life prototype with the look and feel of the final product,” commented Achim Sanzenbacher, Manager, Prototyping, Kaercher.. “Stratasys PolyJet 3D printing, with its rubber-like Agilus material and colourful, smooth Vero material, has enabled us to create prototypes that mimic the final part in no time at all, speeding up our prototype development for the EASY!FORCE trigger gun significantly.”
“Creating a 3D printed prototype that allows us to replicate the different soft and hard materials in one print shortens our design cycles, as we can make a faster and better assessment that the prototype is fit-for-purpose and ensure our design meets the necessary functionality requirements much earlier,” added Florian Friedl, Specialist, Kaercher. “Our products are operated all day in commercial environments, so an accurate design is key to ensuring product functionality and durability when used in harsh environments for sustained periods.”
Brown & Holmes
Meanwhile, Stratasys reseller, SYS Systems, has reported Brown & Holmes, a precision workholding and machining service provider, has invested in the 3D printing vendor’s FDM technology.
The company has brought F170 and Fortus 450mc machines in house, after meeting with SYS Systems at the 2018 TCT Show in Birmingham.
Brown & Holmes has customers around the world operating in the automotive, aerospace, power generation, nuclear, construction and machine tooling markets, and is expanding its capabilities with the adoption of the platforms.
“Our customer base is looking at us for newer and different materials beyond the conventional,” said Mick Waller, Engineering Manager, Brown & Holmes. “There are over 17 materials we can print between the two Stratasys machines, which has meant that we can adopt the newer carbon fibre-type material to replace metal parts in our production solutions. Anything our design team can model we can print, so it’s given us opportunities to be more experimental with designs and parts that we can manufacture.
“We bought the 3D printing machines for our own use for manufacturing parts to put on our fixtures and solutions, but we’re quickly realising that we can offer the printing service as a separate entity to our core business. We’re hoping these machines become too busy and we grow our capacity to offer 3D printed parts out to the market to new and existing customers.”