Page 4 -

AUTOMATION..

3D printing post-processing

gets a 50x productivity boost

Mitsubishi Electric’s range of automation products helps to create the first fully

automated Underwriters Laboratories (UL) approved post-processing machine
for 3D printed plastic parts.
heffield-based Additive Manufacturing
Technologies (AMT) has
teamed up with Mitsubishi
SElectric to further advance its
innovative chemical vapour smoothing
machine, PostPro 3D, by developing an
integrated automation solution. This is
based on Mitsubishi Electric’s MELSEC iQ-
F Series compact PLC, HMIs, SCADA and
MELFA articulated arm robots offered as a
system option. The PostPro vapour
smoothing machine fully automates surface moulding.
finishing of 3D printed parts, skyrocketing Thermoplastic
productivity from a few parts finished every hour up polymers, such as
to hundreds of parts per hour. polyamides (nylons),
By slashing processing times and costs, PostPro polylactic acid, thermoplastic
3D greatly benefits industrial manufacturers and polyurethanes and elastomers, polymethyl
end users. “Up to now, finishing a 3D-printed part methacrylate and polyetherimides are all materials
has been an entirely manual process, which can that PostPro 3D can handle.
account for 30-70% of the total manufacturing The automated post-processing is made
costs. By using our automated solution, PostPro 3D, possible by using a series of pre-defined parameter
manufacturers can cut the end price substantially, sets and algorithms that are applied to PostPro
making 3D printing cost effective for higher-volume proprietary physicochemical Boundary Layer
production,” explained Joseph Crabtree, CEO at Automated Smoothing Technology (BLAST) process.
AMT. The 3D printed parts, created via laser or high-
The innovative machine, that occupies a speed sintering, HP multi jet fusion or fused
2
working space of only 2.5m , can smooth an object deposition modelling technology, can be loaded into
surface to 1µm precision, similar to that of injection the post-processing machine manually or using an
April 2021 • INDUSTRIAL TECHNOLOGY EXTRA • p4