On this week's episode of Additive Insight, we're joined by ALTANA CTO Dr. Petra Severit [PS] & Dr. Max Röttger [MR], Head of 3D Lab & Cubic Ink Additive Manufacturing.
ALTANA is a specialty chemicals company providing Cubic Ink materials to inkjet and resin-based 3D printing systems. The company has a strong focus on Research & Development, investing about 7% of its sales in R&D every year and with every sixth employee working in that field.
Earlier this year, ALTANA sold its controlling stake in dp polar to 3D Systems, but remains committed to supplying materials to users of the technology.
On the Additive Insight podcast, Severit and Röttger discuss what motivated ALTANA to enter the 3D printing space, why the company decided to sell its stake in dp polar, the capabilities of its Cubic Ink materials for inkjet 3D printing, and their plans in AM moving forward.
Below, we also have a transcript of the discussion. [Editor's note: The transcript has been edited for brevity and clarity. For the full, in-depth interview, listen to the below podcast episode.]
Learn more about 3D printing with DuraForm PAx Black and DuraForm PAx Natural (SLS) from our episode sponsor 3D Systems.
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TCT: Can you explain and outline the motivations for entering the 3D printing space, and I guess, what opportunities that ALTANA, as a business, saw in 3D printing and additive manufacturing to harness some of that funding and some of that people power from the R&D to focus on 3D printing.
PS: When we start talking about specialty chemicals industry, we have to be a little bit more precise, and go into the chemistry we do make. We are in organic and polymer science, and do have knowledge in all of these areas. So, we try to combine the competencies across the different divisions and translate this into new unique solutions. We have a unique fundament in organic and polymer materials. And digging into the 3D and additive manufacturing, we can actually combine [and] build on these competencies and develop solutions for technologies, which may actually not be out there yet.
And that is the example for dp polar. We decided to cooperate with dp polar, because its unique inkjet serial production technology, which needed in the past actually also cooperative strengths from the material science. And we specifically bring this to the market there. This is in the polymer range. However, if you look into one of our strong divisions like Eckart, we also have unique alloy competencies there where we also manoeuvre into the additive manufacturing space. And so now you can see how we target new growth markets and how we enter in this market from different directions. With dp polar, we were really the developing partner for enabling that unique technology for not only going into serial production, but also multi material 3D printing technologies, which as you may know, is the future of additive manufacturing.
TCT: Can you explain the decision to take a step back and sell the controlling stake to 3D Systems, and maybe tell me more about the ongoing relationship and collaboration with that business?
PS: I would actually not call it a step back, I would rather call it 'bring it into the next phase,' because what we have to do was, in very deep and close cooperation, tailor our resin and ink product portfolio towards the unique technology of dp polar. And that could not have been done without that very close cooperation. Now that we have the product portfolio, it's actually fairly easy to also expand that into the resin space. So, that's why we want to open up to the big additive manufacturing market. And on the other side, we have everything available, which dp polar needs to bring the printer into the market.
We also see that a strategic partner like we were in the past, the ink strategic partner, a strategic partner when we look into hardware and software development, like 3D Systems, is actually an enabler for doing that quicker that we would follow. For example, whenever there is a need for cooperation, we are very happy to serve that. We do have unique materials, which will be used to enable the polar technology and we will be the supplier, no doubt about it. But there is a good portfolio available. So, now it's easier to get there. But as I said, it's continuous development where we need to make the right decision to move forward and where we can benefit the most.
TCT: Just on dp polar - the last question on that - as I understand it, the controlling stake was sold to 3D Systems. So does Altana still have [any remaining] stake in the business? Are you able to comment on that at all?
PS: We're able to comment on that, but we fully sold our stake in dp polar.
TCT: Maybe this is where we can bring Max in, can you tell me about the portfolio of Cubic InK materials. When I looked on the website, I saw there was a high performance portfolio, prototyping and support materials. So can you take me through each of those different portfolio of materials? And tell me about the capabilities and so on?
MR: Let´s start with the work we did together with dp polar. As Petra pointed out, we really started to develop inkjet inks of materials for the material jetting technology of dp polar. And there we have, let's say, a functional prototyping portfolio. This goes from tough to rigid to flexible to transparent, we can tune the refractive indexes. We have support materials, because in material jetting, you always need a second material next to your actual object material to hold everything in place. There we not only have one material, but a range depending on the geometry you want to print. For a channel with a small diameter, you need something that dissolves quickly in water, and that's actually the point, it's all water soluble. And water soluble has the advantage that everyone can handle this, meaning you just throw it in the water and you take it out a few hours later and it's cleaned, whereas the competitors often have support materials that needs to be manually removed. Our hands-free solution results in increased reliability and thus higher performance of our parts.
Next to functional and support materials, we have the high performance range and the high performance range actually comes from different chemistries, chemistries that we believe only a chemical company can handle. If you want to have a very productive 3D printing system and this can be material jetting or some vat technology, you need materials that can go into the end use, speaking about that performance. That is why for starting the inkjet process we developed materials that are UV cured in the printer and then need a second curing step which is thermal post-cure. And here, we don't speak about a thermal post-cure 60 degrees for one hour irradiation like a standard post-curing oven. In fact, it's really a temperature programme that you may know from some moulding application, but when we do this, we can really alter the properties and have properties that you don't have with UV curing only materials. So, this is what is behind our High Performance Series. And then we have different material classes, we have two that aim for high rigidity high to very high HDT. One of them has a very good chemical resistance, [which means] you can throw it in anything and it will not break down as many of the UV only cured materials.
We are working on very soft materials. Soft even at low temperatures. That's basically for the inkjet world. And as Petra pointed out, then, once we did this, we saw that all of this works even better in any vat-technology. So vat photopolymerisation and we started to transfer these materials from the inkjet world to the resin world. We will show the portfolios for the first time this year at formnext at our booth in the whole growth of what we have, again, the same setup, functional prototyping and then high performance. We don't show the support on the resin side because we do not expect a high interest. One of the focus points is the soft resin material range, where we really have a material that can go up to 250%, 350% deformation and we have a new prototype that can go up to 550 elongation at breakAlso, if we cool it down, for example, at minus 20 degrees it's still elastic, if you have a standard UV cured soft material it will break, become quite brittle at some point.
Another material we launch is a flame-retardant material together with Genera. It can also been seen at the Siemens booth. However, as we are not yet at 100% performance, this the first prototype we developed and it will be the first one of a series of materials having the V-0 and being able to be printed on standard resin printers. And I think this is something we need to point out. Together with dp polar, we developed inks for a special machine. Now that we have sold the stakes we are open in the inkjet world, but also in the resin world to sell our materials to whoever wants to use them. This can be Genera, they have an open system, this can be someone who has another open printer at home, or in their company, or a service provider that has different material libraries.
TCT: On the on the ALTANA website, I noticed that there's mention of previously unattained heat resistant properties in some of your materials. So can you tell me how as a company you've been able to achieve that and also why properties such as heat resistant are so important?
MR: We achieve this by the second chemistry we add to the system. After UV curing to fix the shape and transfer everything to the oven, we use a heat cure and this makes a reaction of a second kind of chemistry and this takes over the performance. Why is it interesting? We had and still have projects where we go into the connector industry, electrical plugs, and there you always need a heat deflection temperature higher than 100, it's better 120, even better 150 degrees.
TCT: In terms of applications, what would you say are the key application opportunities on the inkjet side?
MR: On the inkjet side and that's also what Petra already mentioned, we have the multi-material printing capability. You place a certain property, at a certain voxel in your object where you need it. And this is actually where we have promising projects, multi -material printing adding soft segments, hard segments into organ models. You can add colours, you can add hardness, you can add a friction, you can add a transparency and so on.
There are potential applications where you have very small features or long channels that you cannot really create in any kind of resin printing because your resin will sit in this channel and you will not get it off during printing or washing. So you will block your channels. Or you have a piece like an electric connector, and you have 300 little plugs in this object, and they all must be perfectly free of excess material and one is blocked in each part, then you can throw away the entire part.
TCT: Do you have customers using your 3D printing materials currently?
MR: Yes.
TCT: So, what kind of trends are you seeing in terms of applications or in terms of industry adoption? What kind of markets are coming to you to use your materials for 3D printed parts?
MR: What I just mentioned is electrical connectors, that's happening, we also see organ model printing, I don't mean a part that you actually place into your body, but where the physician, the med tech supply or student can train. We have sold material to people that really do functional prototyping, like reflectors of bikes, in different colours, different structures. Things like that. We see many applications with flame-retardant materials.
TCT: I assume you're constantly talking to the users of your materials - what can you tell me about their demands of ALTANA? What kinds of materials do they want to see? What kinds of properties do they want to see?
MR: We often have project partners that say we are using polyamide 66, 10% glass fibre filled, in injection moulding. They ask: can you make the same? Obviously, we cannot. That's not the aim of what we do. We need to find out with them what the properties they actually need. And this is what we try to target. And then you also find out which properties they don't need. For example, if you have a PA66, you maybe also have a very nice stiffness, but maybe you don't need it for your application. So, for us, it's easier to design the material that fits to them. And this brings me to the point,: what customers appreciate and what they profit from is our strategy that we also adapt our materials. What we show is a portfolio. But we also have different prototypes in our lab and we are ready to adapt a certain property to the application, if there's a good business plan behind it.
PS: Maybe it is very important to point out that we really tailor make materials for our customers and for the applications. If we look in the transition from rapid prototyping to see real production, and it's not a digital transition, it's a long, long way. It always requires material adjustments. It's not a drop in solution. It's really okay now we can go to a higher productivity. Now, we want to go into different market and different applications, but then we need different materials. So, we are willing to adjust and also synthesise new materials, new monomers, polymers and raw materials. And then we do have the competence of having the perfect formulation part and that, whereas if you go to some other competitor companies, it's really just about the formulation work. And then it's about, okay, this is what we can give to you, but not really well explain that whenever you want to have a unique property, you compensate on other properties, obviously. So, we really consult into tailor making the right compromise for getting into new applications and entering new markets.
TCT: Generally speaking, how open our customers to, I guess, initially just embracing 3D printing as an idea to manufacture their part, or, or to prototype their part? And then how open are they to you guys adjusting their materials, because I gather that a lot of companies, a lot of people, they trust the material they've always used. So how much of a journey is that to bring them along with you and say, actually, sometimes it can be better to A) use 3D printing and B) adjust the material?
MR: I think that's one of the crucial questions for everyone in 3D printing. And it's very diverse, I'd say. You have customers that really say, we use PA 12, since ever, so we will not change. So this may not be a good partner for us in ink / resin 3D printing. But there are also many companies that understood and try to find out what properties they need and properties they can less prioritize on. And what we know is that the earlier you start with a customer on a 3D printing project, easier it gets. What we see is, for example, for the V-0 materials, there is a shift happening at the customers that they say, ‘oh, do we really need the V-0? Or is it just something we use all the time, but anyways, maybe we don't need it?’ But as you pointed out, not everyone is like this, mindset wise.
PS: And there we can be the ideal partner, we would not be the person to tell you don't need V-0, because they know very well what the industry needs, but also where the areas are, where change can be implemented. But in the journey together with delivering what we can do, we usually then come to very good solutions to bring new materials into the market and also a little bit challenge the existing requirements behind it.
MR: And what we also see is that there are new 3D printing technologies emerging with higher viscous capabilities and we see that we are quite fast in adapting our materials to these processes. So, I think this is an advantage of us, we are quite reactive.
TCT: Finally, what can you tell us about ALTANA's plans within additive manufacturing moving forward?
MR: So, what we hear until now is that there's really a big demand for V-0 materials, or let's call them flame retardant materials.There's also ESD materials. And this is also no secret, really elastic materials, might they have a special rebound or be very elastic, even at low temperatures or very soft. And we also think we can really have an advantage there with our materials. This is for now what we see as our target. We have a big know-how in our support materials. However, for now, they are material jetting restricted. Anyways, we will re-check this, as I mentioned emerging new technologies also ask for support materials. And in the material jetting world, the multi-material print is very interesting. I think we'll continue also in dentures and everything that goes into the mouth, or as a model for dentures.
PS: The support inks, Max also mentioned an important contribution we bring to the market, which is supporting their sustainability journey. Because, yes, our material is water soluble, some solutions out there are not water soluble. We continue to develop our portfolio towards that direction. But also when we look into next formulations, next adjustments, we do have the baseline of also supporting all of our customers and actually also suppliers to really come with new, more sustainable solutions to the market. I think that is something we can bring to that market anyway, when we talk about chemistry. When we talk about the additive manufacturing, we do have our Helios Sonic business within ALTANA, which is a laser printing technology. It is without any nozzle, so that's great. So, you can use particles, which are bigger than if they have to go through a nozzle, it's contact free.
And we are currently focusing on a 2D printing market and process. But that is just the beginning of a longer journey because we also see big opportunities when we look into the 2.5 or 3D printing market. We also want to use this technology to bring more opportunities and solutions to the additive manufacturing market. And that will be very nicely a combination of what we know from either the material science on the pigments side, the rather decorative area or really the applications with a very high demand when it comes to properties, thermal or mechanical properties. So, that's going to be then later on the combination of those.
