The Fortify team developed Digital Composite Manufacturing (DCM) to unlock new material properties that cannot be achieved with today’s 3D printed photopolymers. Our composite 3D printing system achieves these properties by suspending and aligning Functional Additives (particles and reinforcing fibers) in a resin matrix during printing. Fortify’s materials development platform allows for a wide range of material properties that can be architected to meet the most stringent application needs.

In DCM, functional additives must be uniformly distributed to achieve consistent material properties. Continuous Kinetic Mixing addresses this issue by blending, recirculating, and heating the resin-additive matrix as required throughout the printing process.

Fortify partners with the world’s leading chemical companies to architect specific material properties based on the need of a particular application and solve printability challenges that are barriers to commercialization on other photopolymer platforms.

In DCM, during the printing of each layer, a magnetic field is applied across the build area. This aligns all fibers throughout the layer in the target orientation. Individual regions of this layer are then cured with UV light.  This locks the orientation of fibers only in those regions. This process of orienting and locking fiber is repeated as needed within each layer and for the subsequent layers. This unique ability to control fiber orientation throughout a part allows for precise tuning of material properties and is unprecedented in any manufacturing technology.

Compass

Fortify’s COMPASS software allows users to prepare, support, and slice print files for printing on the FLUX series printers.

Flux Developer

Fortify’s FLUX Developer platform gives users the ability to quickly qualify new materials from initial onboarding to print process refinement on FLUX Series 3D printers.

Fortify partners with leading global materials suppliers for a range of applications:

• High HDT, strength, and stiffness ceramic-fiber reinforced photopolymer tuned for use in tooling applications
• Low-loss dielectric materials for use in high-bandwidth, high-frequency communications systems
• Technical ceramics with low shrink for high temperature and RF applications
• High-temp ESD material for tools, jigs, and fixtures that can be placed directly into a solder reflow oven
• Resins with 10x the thermal conductivity of any other photopolymer with electrical insulation for sensitive heat transfer applications