Material Properties. Part Design. Part Finish. Economics. Lead Time. Pick Two.

That is how most projects go in Additive Manufacturing. It is very rare in the AM world where you can have your cake and eat it too. That is why the University of Adelaide Project is so special.

First Approach

Dr. Tommaso Watson’s Airlock started out as two CNC machined stainless steel parts soldered together. The stainless steel material allowed the part to be autoclavable which was a requirement. However this was expensive, time consuming and compromised the design.

Second Approach

Looking to improve upon the design, Dr. Tommaso Watson’s Airlock moved to Additive Manufacturing with Fused Deposition Modeling. The FDM ABS Airlock allowed for an optimized design and cut down the lead time. However it still was not cost effective at scale, the layer printing created porosity and the ABS material was not autoclavable.

Carbon Approach

Utilizing our Carbon technology, we were able to recommend a material that met all his criteria. Carbon prints isotropic parts which eliminated the porosity. Carbon’s CE 220 material is autoclavable. The lead time was cut down from one month to a week. The Carbon process produced parts at 67% the cost of the first two options.