How Can Material Jetting Systems Be Upgraded for More Efficient Multi-Material Additive Manufacturing

Multi-material Additive Manufacturing (AM) platforms are able to build up components from multiple materials in a single layer-by-layer process. It is expected that this capability will enable the manufacturing of functional structures within products, such as conductive tracks or optical pathways, resulting in radically novel products with unprecedented degrees of functional density. An important variant of commercially available multi-material AM technology is material jetting, which is currently in commercial use for the manufacture of prototypes and design studies. This paper presents a detailed process model of build-time, energy consumption and production cost for the Stratasys Objet 260 Connex system, analyzing the contemporaneous deposition of two different types of photopolymers (Veroclear RGD810 and Tangoblack FLX973). By using this process model to anticipate the effects of various upgrades to the investigated system, such as a larger build volume and a higher deposition speed, this forward-looking paper explores pathways to enhancing the value proposition of such multi-material systems through incremental technology improvement.Mechanical Engineerin