British 3D printer manufacturer RPS has announced the launch of the NEO Material Development Kit, a polymer research and development tool designed to work with the manufacturer’s own NEO800 stereolithography system. The kit offers research and development companies the opportunity to develop a wide range of innovative polymers currently unavailable in the industry today.
Designed by RPS engineers, the NEO Material Development Kit comes in a range of vat and platform sizes. It also includes the Titanium Material Development Kit software module which lets the user develop materials and processing parameters. The kit enables working with multiple resin formulations, offering immediate scalability at different stages of the material development process.
Utilising the small 1 litre vat with a build envelope of 45 x 165 x 40mm (XYZ) and Titanium software, single layer exposure panes can be printed to determine the photo-speed of the formulation being developed. Once the critical exposure is established, developers typically iterate material formulations through tensile testing. Developers can test and retest, adjusting parameters as necessary to achieve the required mechanical properties, prior to scaling up with the other vat, which can take 13 litres of photopolymer and has a build envelope of 230 x 165 x 150mm (XYZ).
David Storey, Director of RPS commented: “This NEO Materials Development Kit now opens the door for large industrial chemical companies such as BASF, DSM and Henkel to push the boundaries of UV photopolymers. The industry is looking for a quantum jump in materials to print end-user production parts from the stereolithography process.”
RPS will be available at stand D40 at the TCT Show this week, 24-26 September at the NEC, Birmingham.
