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Metal 3D printing vs CNC machining? There’s no competition when ‘and’ can be better than ‘or’.

Ingo Uckelmann
April 09, 2019
Metal 3D printing vs CNC machining? There’s no competition when ‘and’ can be better than ‘or’.

Reduced waste, production efficiency and functional gain driven by greater design freedom and flexibility. An increasingly familiar summary of the key benefits afforded by metal 3D printing. Meanwhile, high-volume repeatability, precision surface finishing, particularly in relation to tight tolerances, remain characteristics more closely associated with CNC machining. But what if there was no competition? No ‘either/or’?

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Taking the Plunge: the When, How and Where of Metal 3D Printing

Ingo Uckelmann
March 19, 2019
All about Metal 3D Printing

Now is the time to start considering 3DP, during early product design phases. Here’s what to expect – and what to avoid – when making your first steps in metal 3DP.

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How RapidFit Is Mastering the Automotive Tooling Value Chain

Radhika Dhuru
February 19, 2019
How RapidFit Is Mastering the Automotive Tooling Value Chain

This month, Materialise was awarded the label of ‘Factory of the Future 4.0’. So what does the Factory of the Future look like for automotive tooling? At RapidFit, managing director Filip Dehing says the Factory of the Future will be built on two key principles: mastering the complete value chain, and doing so digitally. In service of this vision, RapidFit’s latest addition to their high-tech workshop is a large-format 5-axis CNC milling machine, large enough for even cubing projects — quality inspection tools the size of an entire car — combined with Siemens NX CAM software.

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Want to Become a ‘Factory of the Future 4.0’? Don’t Go It Alone

Radhika Dhuru
February 12, 2019
Bart Van der Schueren, Materialise CTO, with the 'Factory of the Future 4.0' trophy

The industrial landscape is going digital. By 2020, PwC expects as many as 64% of manufacturing factories to use connected sensors, and expects the number of factories using 3D printing to double. And 2020 isn’t all that far off any longer. So where are we today? For Materialise, the emergence of Factories of the Future is not a phenomenon we’re waiting for. It’s a vision we’re realizing today. And last week, we were proud to be awarded the ‘Factory of the Future Label 4.0’ by Agoria and Sirris, after a rigorous selection procedure. But we’re not going the distance alone. Read on to discover why you can’t be a Factory of the Future in a vacuum.

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Cause for Celebration: 3D Printed Sculptures of Disney’s Mickey Mouse

Jana Obermueller
January 14, 2019
3D Printed Sculptures of Disney’s Mickey Mouse

To commemorate the iconic mouse’s 90th birthday in style, Disney reached out to Materialise to create three 3D-printed sculptures of Mickey. These statues were then featured in events marking the big birthday in a pop-up venue in Brussels, Belgium, and included collaborations with artists who used the 3D-printed statues as blank canvases, allowing them to reinterpret and play on the character’s emblematic look.

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Top 10 3D Printing Blog Posts of 2018

Aura Farrando
December 20, 2018
Top 10 3D Printing Blog Posts of 2018

From medicine to cinema, architecture to automotive, 3D printing has made its presence felt in hugely diverse fields. We collected our best 3D printing blog stories of the year so you can say goodbye to 2018 with some inspiration on what additive manufacturing can do for the world.

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From Concept to Reality in 9 Days: Model Cars for Nokia Bell Labs

Stephanie Benoit
October 31, 2018
3D-printed model cars for Nokia Bell Labs, MWC18

The Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, or MWC, is the biggest event in the mobile industry. For Nokia, 3D Printing provided the ideal solution to represent the company’s innovative spirit with a visual representation of how connected cars in a smart city of the future could look like. With just nine days to realize the entire project from start to finish, Materialise was faced with a significant challenge, but one which we were ready to meet!

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How do you really go large with 3D Printing? An entire Mammoth skeleton!

Gertjan Brienen
October 16, 2018
3D design of a lifesize Mammoth skeleton

Create a 3D-printed replica of an elephant-sized woolly mammoth skeleton? Even with the wide variety of challenges we’re fortunate to experience at Materialise, projects like this don’t come along every day. Project Engineer Gertjan Brienen managed the team that made this fascinating technical exercise a success. In this guest post, he tells us how it tested all our capabilities, from design engineering to our own giant Mammoth printers.

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Travel Back in Time to WWI with a Historical 3D-Printed Coastline Model

Stephanie Benoit
September 03, 2018
Travelling Back in Time to WWI with Historical 3D-Printed Coastline Model

When walking along the Belgian coast today, you would never guess that 100 years ago it was the scene of one of the bloodiest wars in European history: World War I. Only a few traces remain – in Raversijde, you can spot bunkers peeking out from the dunes, including, if you look closely, some remaining coastal artillery. The Atlantikwall Museum in Raversijde allows visitors to immerse themselves in the atmosphere of WWI, and a new exhibition about munition in WWI will bring the coastline of 1914 even more to life. The star of the exhibition is a massive, highly detailed, 3D-printed model which is an exact replica of the coastline as it was during the war.

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4 Reasons to Make Taurus Your New Automotive Prototyping Material

Radhika Dhuru
August 10, 2018
Jonas Van Eyck with automotive prototype produced in Taurus

Is Taurus the perfect 3D printing material for your automotive rapid prototypes? Jonas Van Eyck, Process Engineer at Materialise Manufacturing, digs into what makes an ideal tool for automotive prototyping. Here are the top 4 reasons why Taurus should be your pick for your next project, whether it’s visual prototypes or form-and-fit testing.

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