Plastics News Europe - September 2019 - 35

ADDITIVE MANUFACTURING

Q&A

Urethanes find
their footing in AM

With the development of a new urethane-based AM platform, Huntsman has now joined the
burgeoning number of companies entering the additive manufacturing space. Plastics News Europe
talked to Stephane Peysson, Global Business Development Manager at Huntsman, about the
opportunities and potential of AM technology. By Karen Laird

Huntsman is a well-known manufacturer of, among
other things, polyurethane materials. Now you've
taken it a step further with the launch of the first
urethane-based 3d printing material brand and
platform, Iroprint. Why is Huntsman interested in
3D printing?
Over the last few years there has been a real buzz around
3D printing. The industry is at a tipping point - enjoying
faster growth as the technology moves from prototyping
to mass production. In 2017 market revenue was around
$7.3 billion. By 2020, forecasts suggest the market will
have doubled to $15.8 billion with further growth anticipated to $23.9 billion in 2022 and $35.6 billion in 2024.
As 3D printing continues to grow in popularity, urethane
materials have an important role to play - delivering the
functionality required to enable 3D printing on a mass
scale. At Huntsman, we want to be at the centre of that
drive. That's why we're introducing our Iroprint additive
manufacturing product platform, which contains three different kinds of urethane-based materials (resins, powders
and filaments) that can be 3D printed using a variety of
additive manufacturing methods.

"In additive manufacturing,
you need to tweak each
material to work with
each printer"

high. This needs to go down to allow wider adoption. We
considered all of these factors when developing our Iroprint additive manufacturing platform - focusing specifically on printability, consistency and performance.

Much has been said about the need for new
materials for 3d printing. What properties are
needed for a material to be suitable for 3D printing?
In other words, what's wrong with the materials we
already have?
There is nothing wrong with the materials already available per se but you have to think about the end application. For example, it's fine for a static part or prototype
piece to be made from a rigid and stiff material but, as
soon as you want to produce a part or product that has
to move, you need to think about elastomeric properties
such as dynamic fatigue. When we decided to develop
our Iroprint additive manufacturing products, we knew
we wanted to target the footwear industry first. In this
sector, incumbent materials are, typically, too stiff and
brittle - so there's significant demand for materials that
are more flexible and softer, yet still highly durable. Addressing that need was the starting point for our work.
However, during the development process, we also
thought carefully about productivity, scalability and cost.
A major bottleneck in the wider adoption of 3D printing
is speed. At the moment, printing a sole can take a few
hours, depending on the design. This is partly a printer
issue and partly a material problem. From a materials perspective, the industry needs materials that are faster and
easy to print - for example, filaments that can be easily
pulled or pushed through a printer, and powders that
aren't too sticky. When it comes to scalability, materials
need to be available in larger quantities. It's ok to have a
filament spool of 1kg for prototyping but, for production, you may need bigger spools e.g., 5-8kg spools.
And, of course, pricing plays a part. Currently, the low
volume of materials used in production means costs are

SEPTEMBER 2019

How long has Huntsman been working on this
development?
From our first market assessment and internal discussions
on the topic of 3D printing, to today, it's been around
three years.
What was the challenge in developing a urethanebased additive manufacturing grade?
The key challenge always is to solve the printer / software
/ application / material equation. You need to align these
four elements to provide a real industrial offer. Aside from
this, several other challenges had to be tackled: firstly,
achieving the right material properties but also facing the
speed of change in the 3D printing sector. New printers
and software solutions are coming on stream all the time,
which material producers have to keep pace with. The last
challenge was more related to business models and the
market approach e.g., deciding whether to 'lock in' or go
'open source' needed careful consideration. 3D printing is
not like injection moulding where a material will work with
most types of injection moulding machine. In additive
manufacturing, you need to tweak each material to work
with each printer. The beauty and complexity of additive
manufacturing lies in aligning the printer, the software,
the material and the application requirements. This equation provides a combination of challenges that market
players have to work together to solve.

➡ Continued on page 36
35

Plastics News Europe - September 2019

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