HSS Material Network growing further with iglidur® i3 PL

The VX200 HSS from voxeljet is designed as an open source 3D printing system and provides full access to process parameters and temperature management to best match the additive manufacturing process and material. The HSS Material Network offers customers a flexible and low-risk outsourcing option for material development of additive manufacturing technologies. The addition of the competencies of the HSS Material Network partners enables companies of all sizes to receive unique support, from an initial suitability assessment, through specific development and parameterization, to certification or market-ready qualification of the material. Here we present our partners, projects and proof of concepts.

The iglidur® i3 material is a plastic powder specially developed by igus® GmbH for the production of gliding applications and gears for the additive processes of Powder Bed Fusion of Polymer (PBF-P), such as laser sintering (LS). It is used to manufacture components with a wide variety of applications, for example as special sliders in passenger cars, as gear wheels in e-bikes and even as sliders in elevators.

The special feature of iglidur® i3 PL is the additivation of the powder with solid lubricants, whereby the components manufactured from it achieve a wear resistance that is better by a factor of 3 to 30 than components manufactured from plastic powders otherwise available on the market. For this purpose, a large number of different formulations were tested and developed in the igus laboratory in Cologne. In addition, the service life of iglidur® i3 gears and plain bearings has become calculable online due to the large number of tests. Customers can thus check the properties of the components in advance for their performance and service life in order to make any design adjustments before the final production.

Due to its print head technology, the HSS has the potential for a significantly more economical production than the LS. Moreover, thanks to its open-source conception, HSS has the possibility to specifically adjust component properties on the process side, and thus offers great potential for many applications of the components made of iglidur® i3.

In addition to the high abrasion resistance, iglidur® i3 also stands out as a very good gear material. In numerous tests, the good suitability as gear material could be proven and confirmed by igus. Many times better than gears made of PA12 and PA11 in LS and even better by a factor of 5 than conventionally manufactured gears made of POM.

The iglidur® i3 material has already been available for the PBF-P since 2016. By means of LS, more than 400,000 components have already been manufactured with it. The plain bearings and gears manufactured by the project group Process Innovation of the Fraunhofer IPA and the Chair of Environmentally Friendly Production Technology of the University of Bayreuth within the scope of the proof of concept in HSS exhibit very good mechanical properties, which make a further optimization of the material to the HSS process up to a full qualification quite interesting.

igus is one of the recognized experts when it comes to polymers for sliding applications. 3D printing is not a novelty for the company. For example, the iglidur® i3 PL material was already qualified for laser sintering processes in 2016 and over 400,000 components have been manufactured with it to date. By means of HSS, the material can be processed even more economically. The reason for this is the high productivity and reproducibility of the HSS process.