LAYMA NEXTGEN – Layered Atmospheric Material Application for the Next Generation of Functional 3D Printed Components

提议的机会是评估能够为增材制造（AM）组件添加功能的工业4.0兼容后处理机器的技术可行性。目前的功能添加方法，如着色和涂层，需要半手工生产链，成本高，耗时长。所提出的机器将大规模简化增材制造中的零件功能化阶段。目前最流行的功能添加系统包括水基锅着色方法和手动涂层。这两种方法都非常浪费水、能源效率低下和劳动密集型。总部位于谢菲尔德的智能工业后处理系统制造商增材制造技术有限公司（AMT）发明并申请了一种将材料均匀融合到聚合物部件上的新方法的专利。该方法可用于增材制造（3D打印）部件着色或涂覆各种材料，如碳纳米管、抗菌颗粒、金属、玻璃等。本发明方法使用零水、绿色耗材，不产生任何废弃物。这项技术将通过创造新一代增材制造部件来扰乱全球增材制造市场，这些部件可用于以前不可能实现的高性能应用，例如新型电池/电容器组件，功能性军事或卫星部件。

The proposed opportunity is to evaluate the technical feasibility of an Industry 4.0 compatible post-processing machine capable of adding a functionality to Additively Manufactured (AM) components. Current function-adding methods such as colouring and coating entail semi-manual production chains that are costly and time consuming. The proposed machine will simplify the part functionalising stage in additive manufacturing at scale.Current most popular function-adding systems include water-based pot colouring methods and manual coating. Both methods are extremely water-wasteful, energy-inefficient and labour-intensive.Additive Manufacturing Technologies Ltd (AMT), a Sheffield based manufacturer of smart industrial post-processing systems has invented and filed patents for a novel way to uniformly fuse material onto the polymer parts. The method can be used to colour Additively Manufactured (3D printed) parts or coat them with wide range of materials such as carbon nanotubes, antibacterial particles, metals, glass etc. The invented method uses zero water, green consumables and does not produce any waste.This technology would disrupt the global AM market by creating new generation of AM parts that can be used for high performance applications that were not possible before, e.g. novel battery/capacitor components, functional military or satellite parts.