Plastics & Rubber World - May/June 2019 - 30

3D PRINTING

Free your mind
Lukas Pawelczyk is
responsible for global
Freeformer sales at
Arburg. In this interview,
he speaks with PRW
about development of
the 3D printers and how
they can turn imagination
into reality

Arburg has two Freeformer machine
sizes, 200-3X (left) and 300-3X
PRW: What is the history of the
Freeformer programme, how long
have you been involved?
Lukas Pawelczyk: The ﬁrst Freeformer
was unveiled at the K Show in 2013. After that we started sales in Germany and
in 2015 we started worldwide sales. I've
been with the Freeformer programme for
ﬁve years now.

Lukas Pawelczyk, Arburg

What is the latest addition to the
Freeformer range?
We have just launched the Freeformer
300-3X. This has three material discharge
units and a larger build area. It can produce hard and soft material combinations,
with support structure. Toothbrushes are
the common example.

Did Arburg partner with anyone to
support development?
We worked with some universities and
institutes to help with development, but
Arburg owns the related patents.
How are sales of the Freeformer
machines?
Very good, the market is very strong. Rapid technical development, short product
lifecycles, a growing number of variants,
and customer-speciﬁc products, they all
support Freeformer sales.
We have a lot of customers in the medical sector, the technology works well with
specialised biocompatible or implantable
materials. Parts are already being used for
out-of-body applications and we have customers carrying out implant trials.
The sterile machine environment
supports medical applications?
Yes, the process supports that. But successful creation of an implant is not related to Freeformer performance. It's more
to do with construction of the implant, the
material, whether the medical company
can certify the component. I can print the
material, but FDA approval, etc., has to be
done by the customer. The Freeformer
can use virgin and FDA-approved material. So the certiﬁcation process is not such
a challenge.

Products produced by the Freeformer 300-3X using hard and soft materials

WWW.PRW.COM | MAY/JUNE 2019

Is there any particular country which
stands out as being more interested in
the technology?
Not a single country, but Europe, China
and the US are where we receive the most

http://WWW.PRW.COM

Plastics & Rubber World - May/June 2019

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