Bringing the experience to Impossible Objects bodes well for their impressive vision. Hoover joined Impossible Objects in 2022, having spent over a decade with Xerox, including time as CEO of the company’s Palo Alto Research Center, aka PARC, and later as CTO of Xerox. The company aims to target high-performance polymers and metal replacements, as their technology has the strength-to-weight ratio of aluminum. Their process is inherently composite, and they are currently working with materials such as fiberglass, nylon, PEEK, and carbon fiber. Hoover explains that they are not trying to be cheaper than other high-end 3D printers but faster. ![]() “I’d be happy if we grabbed 10% of that 50 billion market a year that’d be pretty good,” says Hoover. New technologies, like those developed by Impossible Objects, aim to take a substantial share of this growth by focusing on speed and materials. This growth is expected to come from higher volume manufacturing applications. The 3D printing market, valued at $24 billion today, is projected to grow to $50 billion by the end of the decade. This continued innovation could lead to even greater growth in the 3D printing market, expanding its reach into new industries and applications. The current machine is designed to run at 25 feet per minute, and Swartz sees the possibility of machines running at 100 feet per minute or faster in the future. The company’s founder, Bob Swartz, refers to their technology as a “Moore’s Law moment for 3D printing.” This is only the first step, as the technology they are applying has the potential for significant improvements. Speeding Up 3D Printing: A Moore’s Law Moment? During our call, Hoover demonstrated a 3D printed pocket palette, stating, “This is a part we can print every 15 seconds.” The palette illustrates a core value proposition, bringing the 3D printing element of a workflow up to the speed of other industrial systems in a process chain. In the process, the circuit boards are placed onto a raft or palette and pass over a vat of molten solder. Wave soldering is an industrial, high-volume soldering process that rapidly produces circuit boards. To summarise, the 15 times speed increase is based on three factors: the speed of creating each layer, the thickness of the layers, and the packing density of the parts within the build block.Īmong the new applications for the CBAM 25 is a pocket version of a wave solder palette, a type of fixture used in soldering circuit boards. “The packing density is critical because they can only get, you know, six or seven percent packing densities of their parts, whereas we can get much higher packing densities because the problems with the heating between parts are not an issue in our process,” Swartz said. Swartz added that the company’s 3D printers also have a higher packing density than their competitors, which increases productivity. There’s a thermal time constraint or curing process with UV,” he said. That is what makes a lot of these processes very slow. “We don’t have the FDM or SLS process where you melt and cool and melt and cool. ![]() Hoover explained that the CBAM 25’s speed advantage is due to several factors, including the printing process being carried out at room temperature. The advantages of CBAM technology include stronger materials, faster production, compatibility with various thermoplastic powders, better dimensional accuracy, no warpage or shrinkage, and lower costs, according to the company. The sheets are stacked, heated, and compressed to fuse together, then the unfused carbon fiber is removed, leaving a 3D object. They then flood the sheet with a polymer powder, which sticks to the fluid, and vacuum off the excess powder. ![]() CBAM then prints the layers onto a carbon fiber sheet using an inkjet head and an aqueous fluid. Impossible Objects founder, Bob Swartz, explains that, like other 3D printing processes, they start with a CAD model, and slice it into layers. How does CBAM additive manufacturing work? The CBAM 25 printer, which is capable of operating at 25 feet per minute, has the potential to revolutionize the industry with its increased speed and efficiency.ģD Printing Industry spoke to Impossible Objects founder, Bob Swartz and company CEO Steve Hoover to learn more about Composite Based Additive Manufacturing, CBAM, and how Impossible Objects is targeting CNC machining with speed and precision, and how 15x is only the beginning. Impossible Objects has unveiled a new 3D printing system that is 15 times faster than its competitors.
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