Editor’s Pick: New technique enhances photopolymer additive manufacturing

3D printing startup Fortify announces the Fortify Continuous Kinetic Mixing System (CKM), which enables the ability to blend fiber and particle additives into photopolymer materials. The new system meets the need for advanced material properties in additive manufacturing. 

Fortify CEO and co-founder Josh Martin says development of the CKM system “was an integral part of Fortify’s strategy.” The new mixing system will be a featured part of the company’s Digital Composite Manufacturing platform. 

Fortify refers to the process of mixing custom additives with photopolymers as CKM. It claims the process can create production-quality parts that use ceramic or other reinforcing fibers and particles to increase strength, stiffness, and other engineering-grade properties. 

The injection molding industry has been using fiber and particle reinforcement to enhance polymer performance and functionality for decades. Fortify says the new CKM technique ensures that additives stay uniformly distributed throughout the material while mitigating sedimentation and aggregation. The company believes this capability will result in the manufacturing of a new class of functional materials. 

The CKM process incorporates additives to enhance mechanical performance (strength, stiffness, toughness, wear and heat deflection temperature) as well as thermal and electrical properties. Fortify says its platform “combines the scalability, resolution and surface quality of photopolymers with the performance expectations of traditional high-performance polymers.”

Fortify’s Digital Composite Manufacturing platform combines the CKM process with a new magnetic alignment technology, Fluxprint. Fortify will begin shipping to select partners starting summer 2020. 

Sources: Press materials received from the company and additional information gleaned from the company’s website.