The German machinery company Arburg (www.arburg.com) gave an international debut to its Freeformer 300-3X at the recent Formnext 2018 show, where it processed three components using the Arburg Plastic Freeforming (APF) process; this enables the industrial additive manufacturing of complex functional components in resilient hard/soft combinations, which the company says is a world first.

With the Freeformer 300-3X, the designation 300 stands for the available part carrier surface area in cm2 — making it just under 50% larger than on the proven Freeformer 200-3X.

A new feature on the large Freeformer is a two-part build chamber door; this allows the material containers to be refilled during on-going operation by opening the top half of the door.

The automatic opening and closing of the door, as well as optional interfaces, also allows additive manufacturing to be automated and the Freeformer to be integrated in production lines.

At Formnext 2018, Arburg showed a host of parts, including a selection of two- and three-component items, to highlight the wide range of applications of both Freeformer machines.

They included a two-component gripper (hard and soft materials), cable clips made from poly-propylene, transparent test discs made from PMMA (poly-methyl-meth-acrylate), and bellows made from medical TPE-S.