Ultimaker Offers Metal Expansion Kit

Ultimaker has extended its Ultimaker Platform with a Metal Expansion Kit, which the company claims will make metal 3D printing more accessible and affordable.

The Ultimaker Metal Expansion Kit includes materials that are automatically recognized by the printer through NFC and enables efficiently switching between printing plastics and metal on one machine. The launch of the Ultimaker Metal Expansion Kit is accompanied by the release of a MFFF dedicated Ultimaker Cura 5.1 version that brings the extensive set of features needed to prepare metal parts on the Ultimaker Platform.  

"The Ultimaker Metal Expansion Kit is especially suitable for printing non-of-the-shelf parts such as tools, jigs and fixtures, replacement parts, functional prototypes and auxiliary components," said Andrea Gasperini, Product Manager at Ultimaker. "The Kit provides access to a complete and validated 3D printing workflow on an open platform that offers competitive quality and lead times normally only accessible with full in-house metal fused filament fabrication (MFFF) solutions at a much higher total cost of ownership."

The new Kit includes:

• All required items for metal parts preparation from printing to accessing post-processing services, including materials and a set of dedicated print cores to support both the metal filament (Ultrafuse 17-4PH) and the Ultrafuse Support Layer. Especially for this Kit, Ultimaker developed a new Print Core DD 0.4, a highly wear-resistant core to print the abrasive support material.
• Access to exclusive Ultimaker 3D Printing Academy content – developed together with the team of BASF Forward
• Access to the BASF Debinding and Sintering Order Management Portal, for post-processing of the 3D printed part into a full metal part.

The Ultimaker Metal Expansion Kit will be available in North America, China, EU and UK in July 2022. Contents of the Kit vary by country. For more information on the Metal FFF Solution, visit www.ultimaker.com/metal.

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