Overview: INTAMSYS FUNMAT PRO 410 – industrial-grade twin extrusion 3D printer

3D Printing Business evaluations the INTAMSYS FUNMAT PRO 410 3D printer.

Developed by Shanghai-based INTAMSYS (based 2012), the FUNMAT PRO 410 is an industrial-grade FFF system characterised by its massive construct quantity and high-performance 3D printing capabilities.

As is the case with the remainder of the INTAMSYS portfolio, the FUNMAT PRO 410 is definitively a high-temperature 3D printer. Constructed for engineering-grade elements in sectors resembling aerospace, automotive, and vitality, the system’s worth is derived largely from its intensive materials capabilities. The FUNMAT is able to processing all kinds of high-performance filaments resembling PEEK, PEKK, ULTEM, PPSU, PP, PC, and plenty of carbon fiber-reinforced composites.

The worth tag stands at a hearty $29,999 however that is fairly priced for what you get. Past simply printing just about any polymer-based materials available on the market, the FUNMAT PRO 410 additionally gives a dual-extrusion printhead, a large construct quantity of 305 x 305 x 406mm, and a plethora of quality-of-life options you’d anticipate from a printer within the value vary.

A very industrial-grade construct

INTAMSYS goals to merge high quality and reliability with the FUNMAT PRO 410, and that is evident proper on the unboxing stage. The system comes very well-packaged in a strong picket delivery crate with all the upkeep instruments you’ll have to stick with it and working for years.

The easy but sturdy all-metal body comes totally enclosed with a door on each the entrance and the highest. We discovered the double entry level design to be significantly useful on bigger builds because it’s not at all times handy to only attain in and deal with the print from the entrance. It’s price noting that the printer is on the bigger facet, measuring 728 x 684 x 1480mm and weighing in at 220kg. As such, it’ll want its personal devoted workspace on the store ground.

The construct chamber itself may be heated as much as 90°C and sports activities an lively carbon H13 HEPA filter for protected indoor operation. Nevertheless, the FUNMAT PRO 410 ought to nonetheless at all times be utilized in a well-ventilated space. The mattress can be heated as much as 160°C, which is essential in relation to avoiding warping and delamination points on the undersides of prints. INTAMSYS’ print floor of alternative is a magnetic, detachable glass plate, making half retrieval a easy process.

On the connectivity entrance, customers are given the selection between an SD card, Wi-Fi, and ethernet. The system even comes full with further options like a filament jam/absence warning and energy failure restoration, making the day-to-day 3D printing workflow all of the extra nice.

Your alternative of high-temperature filaments

To print with high-temperature filaments, a high-temperature nozzle is important, and that is actually the place the FUNMAT PRO 410 shines. The system’s printhead is supplied with a twin extrusion setup, a customized liquid cooling meeting, and a CuCrZr nozzle with a most temperature of 500°C. Moreover, INTAMSYS has chosen to combine two San Ace 40T Broad Temperature Vary Followers to chill the filament as soon as it’s been extruded and there are two purge tanks to facilitate nozzle cleansing.

The printhead is a direct drive system, which means the motor which provides the filament to the nozzle is mounted immediately within the printhead itself (though the filament chamber additionally has two motors to help with materials feeding). Whereas this will likely lead to slower speeds when in comparison with a Bowden extruder system, it means the FUNMAT can be higher geared up to deal with complicated and versatile filaments, which is the precedence on an industrial-grade printer resembling this.

The checklist of appropriate filaments is an intensive one and consists of ASA, BOVH, HIPS, PVA, PP, PA, PEEK, PEKK, ULTEM, carbon fiber composites, and extra.

One very noteworthy function of the FUNMAT is the heated filament chamber – one thing we don’t at all times see on high-temperature printers. Housed beneath the construct chamber, the filament chamber is a humidity-controlled setting that’s used to retailer as much as two materials spools at a time. It may be heated as much as 70°C and finally serves to stop the lively filaments from absorbing any moisture, vastly enhancing print efficiency over the long run. We discovered this addition to work like a allure and might solely hope different industrial-grade OEMs comply with swimsuit.

To degree or to not degree

With regards to working the FUNMAT, the 7” full-color touchscreen on the entrance supplies all the performance you want, together with mattress calibration, filament loading, and construct administration. The system is wrapped in a extremely refined consumer interface with intuitive menus and a number of other completely different language choices. The FUNMAT has one of the refined management techniques we’ve examined right here at 3D Printing Business, so it’s about what you’d anticipate from a printer of this caliber.

A correctly leveled construct plate is crucial if you’d like high-quality 3D prints, with the overall rule of thumb being to go away a spot as thick as a sheet of paper between the nozzle and the print floor. The FUNMAT PRO 410 comes with a leveling sensor put in immediately within the printhead as commonplace, and customers can select between two completely different mattress leveling strategies: handbook and computerized.

The handbook methodology, guided by the touchscreen, sees customers modify 4 spring-loaded knobs beneath the construct plate, every of which modifies the flatness of the mattress. Whereas the method is pretty lengthy and arduous, it really works properly so we suggest manually leveling the mattress no less than as soon as earlier than beginning any prints.

However, the automated leveling methodology leverages the sensor put in within the printhead. With the assistance of the metallic leveling ruler supplied within the field, the system measures the positions of three completely different factors on the construct plate, permitting the printer to find out the relative place of the platform to the true XY aircraft. It then makes use of this offset to carry out real-time compensation by elevating or decreasing the Z-axis through the printing course of. This methodology works finest as soon as a handbook calibration has already been executed so it’s finest to mix the 2 for optimum outcomes.

Total, the mattress calibration system works as supposed but it surely isn’t good. We discovered it to be time-consuming, so the FUNMAT may do with the addition of a piezoelectric sensor to make the workflow totally automated, or a stay Z-offset button to regulate the nozzles throughout printing. The sensor would fully remove the necessity to slide any metallic sheets below the nozzle, leading to a really consumer input-free course of. It might additionally allow an computerized leveling step to be carried out earlier than every print, additional enhancing the primary layers of builds.

The INTAMSUITE slicer

INTAMSYS supplies its personal slicing software program to be used with the FUNMAT PRO 410: INTAMSUITE. The slicer is a reskinned model of the widely-used Cura, donning the sunshine blue colour scheme of the INTAMSYS model.

As such, it comes full with all the performance you’d anticipate of a run-of-the-mill FFF print preparation program. This consists of fundamental translation, rotation, and rescaling operations, in addition to an easy-to-use and intuitive UI for construct parameter refinement. The automated helps are match for objective the vast majority of the time and there’s additionally an skilled mode for those who want to intently management the result of the construct.

Owing to the twin extrusion structure of the FUNMAT, the system is ready to 3D print assist constructions utilizing soluble filaments resembling PVA, HIPS, and BVOH. To enrich this performance, the INTAMSUITE slicer additionally options superior assist era settings. After choosing which extruder would be the assist extruder, customers are capable of modify assist infills, assist interfaces, assist roofs, assist flooring, and extra.

Sadly, technical efficiency is actually the place the INTAMSUITE slicer falters, as we bumped into some vital lagging throughout day-to-day use on a number of completely different high-end PCs. Whereas this system remains to be usable, the efficiency points develop into much more prevalent when there are a number of 3D fashions on display without delay, so collection manufacturing could also be a chore when you have the identical expertise we did.

Benchmarking the INTAMSYS FUNMAT PRO 410: 77/100

It’s time to see what the FUNMAT PRO 410 can actually do. We leap proper in with 3D Printing Business’s personal benchmarking mannequin, which consolidates lots of our smaller print exams into one complete half. We often print this check in PLA to match outcomes between printers, however we additionally usually attempt a higher-performance filament to see how the machine fares.

Naturally, we opted for a PEEK variant this time round. PEEK is among the better-known thermoplastics within the PAEK household of high-performance polymers. The fabric combines excessive power and biocompatibility with chemical resistance and wonderful thermal stability, making it a jack-of-all-trades alternative for all method of high-performance purposes in crucial industries resembling aerospace and healthcare.

We assign every of the person sections of the benchmarking mannequin a weighted rating primarily based on elements resembling dimensional precision, floor high quality, and structural integrity. The FUNMAT earned an total 3D Printing Business rating of 77/100 – a very good industrial-grade 3D printer is a 75+.

The overhang portion of the check is designed to find out the angles at which the system is ready to print with out using assist constructions. The FUNMAT managed to clock in a most overhang angle of fifty° with none issues, which is implausible for a fabric as tough to print as PEEK.

Equally, the bridging check is meant to guage a system’s skill to 3D print horizontally into the void. Whereas the FUNMAT solely managed to print as much as a bridge size of simply 20mm earlier than the constructions began curving, that is nonetheless a powerful consequence that we’re very pleased with.

Lastly, we check out the retraction check, which supplies us an thought of the 3D printer’s extrusion capabilities. With high-temperature supplies like PEEK, it’s commonplace for even one of the best printers to wrestle with this check, however the FUNMAT held its personal admirably. The spikes definitely had some vital stringing between them however the constructions themselves have been fabricated efficiently on the appropriate heights.

We additionally needed to see how the FUNMAT PRO 410 would deal with round constructions, so we 3D printed a round trajectory check. By learning the conventional distribution of the concentric circles’ diameters (20mm, 65mm, 100mm), we will say that the printer gives ample repeatability when the imply of the distinction is below 0.1mm and the usual deviation is below 0.05mm. Our measurement gadgets are correct to ±0.015mm.

The FUNMAT displayed first rate repeatability right here, with a median offset of 0.085mm for the X-axis and 0.139mm for the Y-axis, leading to a median of 0.112mm for each axes. Whereas it is a little excessive for an industrial-grade system, the common commonplace deviation got here in at solely 0.0415mm, which is great.

Digging deeper, we will attribute the discrepancy between the X and Y axis to the truth that each axes are individually managed by a sinusoidal perform. This type of perform has ‘lifeless factors’ the place the rate of the printhead falls to zero, however its inertia causes it to overshoot and lose precision. The outcomes for the X-axis are higher than these for the Y-axis as a result of the latter has to hold extra weight, leading to larger inertia. As such, when printing elements the place dimensional precision is a precedence, it’s finest to print these crucial dimensions alongside the X-axis the place potential.

Under you’ll discover the bell curves for one of the best and worst circles within the check – Circle three for the X-axis and Circle two for the Y-axis. In one of the best case, 99.6% of the 100mm circles manufactured by this 3D printer can be between 99.78mm and 100.12mm. Within the worst case, 99.6% of the 65mm circles fabricated by this 3D printer can be between 64.72mm and 64.95mm.

Actual software exams: PEEK, PC, and PA-CF

Shifting on, we used our PEEK filament to 3D print three industrial elements you’d usually discover in an aerospace or automotive manufacturing facility: a turbine, a piping component, and a bevel gear. The turbine and piping component have been 3D printed with the assistance of SP5000, a soluble assist materials that dissolves in ethyl acetate, whereas the bevel gear was printed with none helps and the door of the FUNMAT left open.

The system fabricated each the turbine and pipe to a really excessive total high quality, with clean surfaces and wonderful layer bonding. Nevertheless, even after submerging the elements in ethyl acetate for over 24 hours, we needed to take away a lot of the SP5000 assist materials utilizing a cutter, leading to a white residue on the surfaces of the parts. We attributed this to our personal processing parameters as we used a spot of 0.00mm between the elements and the helps – maybe leaving a spot of 0.10mm would have resulted in cleaner interfaces.

However, the bevel gear was printed flawlessly – the high-strength element may definitely be used as a part of a practical prototype or end-use meeting. There’s not a lot to say aside from the truth that the FUNMAT PRO 410 prints PEEK and it prints it properly. A giant win for INTAMSYS.

Subsequent up, we 3D printed a set of Funktion-One Res 2 floor stacks utilizing polycarbonate (PC) filament.

The bottom stacks are designed to angle the sound system at 9.8° as a way to enhance the sound dispersion over quick distances, permitting the highest of the speaker to ship excessive frequencies to these standing closest to the stage. In our case, we would have liked these stacks to deal with each the load of the speaker (48kg) and the drive of the straps used to carry them in place. The FUNMAT impressed right here as our printed elements featured wonderful floor qualities and no defects, and finally proved to be match for objective.

We concluded our testing with three carbon fiber-reinforced polyamide (PA-CF) prints: a set of speaker wedges, a bicycle helmet (with HIPS soluble helps), and a planetary gear system.

The 3D printed speaker wedge is an inside element designed to offset a speaker by 3mm in order that it doesn’t make contact with the part plug. We opted for PA-CF because of the slight flexibility of the fabric, which allows it to kind a vacuous seal when the casing of the speaker is tightened. The FUNMAT printed the composite wedge with ease and the half labored completely.

Equally, we opted for PA-CF for the bicycle helmet resulting from its power and influence resistance, which allows the fabric to soak up shocks with out fracturing. Whereas the helmet did require a bit post-processing, the floor high quality was wonderful and the half had minimal defects. The interfaces between the PA-CF and the HIPS helps have been additionally extraordinarily clear with no materials bleeding.

Lastly, we’ve the 3D printed planetary gear system. Mechanical assemblies resembling this one enable us to find out simply how tight the tolerances of the 3D printer are, as the convenience of meeting and total fluidity of the system may be judged very simply. The FUNMAT PRO 410 did a wonderful job with this print, as every of our gears had clear surfaces and meshed properly with the remainder of the meeting, leading to a totally practical gear system.

The decision

When all is claimed and executed, the INTAMSYS FUNMAT PRO 410 has confirmed itself to be an industrial-grade powerhouse. Combining a decent construct quantity with wonderful print high quality, the system is a superb alternative for skilled and industrial customers seeking to 3D print high-performance elements with engineering-grade supplies.

We now have to offer props the place it’s due, as INTAMSYS has very clearly positioned a serious deal with refining the consumer expertise right here. The 3D printer’s management system is as refined as may be and the inclusion of a devoted filament chamber means there’s no want for any third-party add-ons – the FUNMAT is really prepared to make use of straight out of the field.

Very similar to any product on the market, the system does after all have its shortcomings. The mattress leveling process may do with a couple of tweaks for each ease of use and time financial savings, whereas the corporate’s INTAMSUITE slicer appears to endure from unlucky efficiency points.

Nonetheless, the multitude of clever design concerns make the machine an amazing alternative for these looking for a high-temperature 3D printer. When you’re out there for a no-nonsense, dependable methodology of 3D printing PEEK, carbon fiber composites, and different industrial supplies, we will safely say the FUNMAT PRO 410 has received you coated.

Technical specs

Purchase the INTAMSYS FUNMAT PRO 410 right here.

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Featured picture exhibits the INTAMSYS FUNMAT PRO 410 3D printer. Picture by 3D Printing Business.