Stratasys unveils multi-cell additive manufacturing array made for continuous production

Stratasys has revealed a 3D printing array built for continuous production and smart manufacturing. 

The new Stratasys Continuous Build 3D Demonstrator is a scalable 3D printing array that uses intelligent coding to automatically detect redundant prints, instantly shifting production to another print cell, an innovation which Stratasys says produces a 99.9 per cent successful print rate.

Ido Eylon, Stratasys South-Asia Manager, said: “Even when something goes wrong there is redundancy - this is the area of largest expansion for our technology.”

The demonstrator is designed for low volume production and mass customisation, unleashing opportunities for parts with low economies of scale to be made cheaply and quickly.

The array is scalable with rising production demand, with easy addition of print cells to create potentially huge printing arrays.

The Continuous Build 3D Demonstrator was unveiled on May 9 at the RAPID + TCT Show in Pittsburgh, USA.

Scott Crump, Stratasys Co-founder and Chief Innovation Officer: “The Stratasys Continuous Build 3D Demonstrator is an important milestone in the company’s long term vision to make additive manufacturing a viable solution for volume production environments.

“It combines our FDM print quality, GrabCAD control and monitoring, and a new multi-cell, scalable architecture to create a breakthrough manufacturing platform.”  

The platform has a modular unit with multiple 3D print cells working simultaneously, driven by a central, cloud-based architecture. To set new standards in additive manufacturing throughput, the 3D Demonstrator is designed to produce parts in a continuous stream with only minor operator intervention, automatically ejecting completed parts and commencing new ones. 

Each 3D print cell can produce a different job to help enable mass customisation projects.  Additional cells can be added at any time to the scalable platform to increase production capacity as demand requires. Automatic queue management, load balancing and architecture redundancy further lead to accelerated throughput as jobs are automatically routed to available print cells.

The demonstrator advances additive manufacturing’s progress in zero-inventory and on-demand customisation of parts and products.