“They listened to everything we asked for.” – How Toyota helped shape the Stratasys F3300 FDM 3D printer

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It’s 2020 when Stratasys feels ready to let a customer in on an ongoing machine development project. It has already taken them the best part of three years and will do again before anyone casts eyes on the F3300 system without a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA).

The first NDA bears the signature of William Dallas Martin, a Toyota additive manufacturing engineer whose use of his pen doesn’t stop there. Having been given a deep dive into the machine by Chris Rollag, the Product Manager leading much of the project, Martin would soon return with a list of essentials Toyota wanted to see incorporated into the platform. Three years later, an F3300 had been installed at a Toyota facility, and Martin had put in the first purchase order for the system.

“They literally listened to everything that we asked for,” Martin told TCT, having shared with an audience at Formnext the day prior: “They knocked it out of the park with this machine.”

The F3300 had been teased for weeks ahead of Formnext, with Stratasys sharing silhouetted graphics of the machine before revealing scant details about the product earlier this month. It wasn’t until the crowds gathered at the end of the first day of Formnext that a wooden box would fall away to reveal a machine that Toyota is ‘proud’ to be the first buyer of.

“I love it,” Martin said. “I am proud to say that we’re the first one to put a PO in and own it. This machine is going to make my throughput 50% faster.”

In the building of the F3300, Stratasys started from scratch rather than riff off the architecture of past FDM systems, integrating a tool changer that allows the user to deploy one of four extruders at a time. Tools can be changed within around 14 seconds, giving the user more flexibility in scenarios of extruder redundancy – one extruder can pick up the slack of another that has broken down – while also allowing them to print multiple colours in one part and even incorporate two different resolutions too. That latter feature was one Stratasys had been looking to achieve from the very beginning.

“Early on, one of the requirements I had was I want to be able to do multiple resolutions in the same build,” Rollag told TCT. “My original thought was, ‘Well, let’s just put more heads on there,’ but our engineers started thinking if you do that, you’re going to have a risk of ooze or you have to wait for it to heat up and cool down. So, let’s talk about machine tools. What does a CNC machine do? They use a tool changer.”

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Exhibit at the UK's definitive and most influential 3D printing and additive manufacturing event, TCT 3Sixty.

Stratasys went to the industrial leader in tool changer manufacture, ATI, and commissioned the company to build a custom product for the F3300. Since Stratasys expects users to do multiple tool changes in a build, they needed repeatability, reliability, and accuracy in the XY dimensions.

Per Martin, Stratasys’ tool changer is delivering on the promise. Martin works in Toyota’s TILT Lab and is responsible for delivering tooling, jigs, and fixture applications to his colleagues on the production lines. Around 5,000 cars come off these production lines every day, with Toyota harnessing FDM technology to produce manufacturing aids in materials such as PA12 CF and ULTEM 9085.

The application of 3D printing at this facility has been successful, with Martin somewhat a champion of the technology. And such is his belief in 3D printing processes, he had no qualms about pushing the envelope when he handed his list over to Rollag and the Stratasys team. High up on that list was the need for a quieter machine, less air consumption and bigger material bays. Having more filament capacity was a key point for Martin and his team since one of them would regularly have to come by the facility on a weekend to ‘feed the beast.’ Elsewhere on the list was a request for autocalibration, which along with the new material bays, helps to reduce labour and save time. Because thousands of cars are coming off the production line each day, time is of the essence, and so ensuring the F3300 could go faster than previous Stratasys FDM solutions was also necessary.

“The linear motors we use on the gantry – fast, very fast. Throughput was the first thing we were going after,” Rollag said. “Make it as fast as possible. Get rid of the thinking that FDM is slow.”

With this system and a series of F3000 machines to come, Stratasys might be on its way to doing just that. Toyota has positioned the F3300 system it has been using close to its F900 system, having them both print similar components and recording the time savings. Martin estimates the F3300 to be between 46-50% faster while maintaining the same resolution and accuracy.

“We were wanting Stratasys to do the impossible, and make it faster without sacrificing quality and resolution,” Martin said. “When they came up with this concept, it’s a whole new design, all new extruders, and an all-new drive system, we were amazed at how they answered the question.”

In answering the question, Stratasys deployed more than 100 engineers, including mechanical and electrical engineers. The company looked at how other industries achieve high speed and high quality in tandem while limiting trade-offs. It also sought to satisfy some recurring wants, whether it be autocalibration of the build plate, larger material bays or the ability to facilitate multiple resolutions in the same part. This latter upgrade also helps to ensure quick printing speeds by allowing the extruder to speed up on longer runs before slowing down to add the detail. And as Stratasys moves forward with the F3000 series, there may be more improvements to come.

Rollag says the F3300 is automation-ready with more than 400 data streams coming off the machine and an inclination to explore how artificial intelligence and machine learning can help better the process control of the machine. Stratasys has also confirmed that the F3300 is likely to be the smallest machine in the F3000 series, with mention of moving towards build volumes that are ‘in the range of two metres or more’ and subsequently a second gantry with maybe four more extruders.

“We designed this for scalability,” Rollag finished. “The linear rails are very simple because it’s a linear motor, it’s not on the belt or chain, none of that stuff changes, it just travels on the rail. That’s already done, all you have to do is extend the rail. The gantry was designed for that, the oven was designed in a modular way, so we can just extend the modules. The big challenge is the parts themselves. When you get to large thermoplastic parts, the shrink rates and everything that goes into that, that’s where the problems are: how do you move a part? Because you’re not just going to pick it up anymore, you may need automation. So, we’re looking into what automation we need in order to make this user experience work.”