“We market products with a variety of properties like toughness and heat resistance as well as transparency and flexibility that support a number of new applications,” said Dr. Markus Steilemann, Chief Innovation Officer at Covestro.

“Covestro's efforts will make a key contribution to advancing the use of 3D printing in industrial mass production. We believe the material data now need to be integrated into the software used on 3D printers so that component structures can be further optimized,” Steilemann said.

“We want to work with leading partners in the process chain to further advance these developments,” added Julien Guiu, who leads the company's global 3D printing activities. “These include formulators, 3D printer manufacturers, software companies, service providers and of course OEMs.”

For this purpose, Covestro recently opened a new laboratory for 3D printing at its headquarters in Leverkusen. The lab will soon be receiving additional equipment and is used by the company and its partners to develop material solutions and test them under practical conditions. The Covestro competence team for additive manufacturing has extensive know-how in the processing of materials using common 3D printing technologies.

Covestro offers a broad choice of filaments for the FFF process, from flexible thermoplastic polyurethanes (TPU) to high strength polycarbonate (PC).

Covestro TPU is very well suited for additive manufacturing thanks to its excellent abrasion resistance and elasticity. Typical applications are sports, footwear or automotive.

Covestro PC grades transformed into filaments by its partner Polymaker show excellent temperature stability and toughness. 3D-printed products made from these polycarbonates can be used in lighting, design and other applications that depend on good strength even with exposure to high temperatures.

Covestro also offers TPU powders for selective laser sintering (SLS), in which a laser beam is used to sinter the material. Spatial structures are thus created layer by layer. TPU displays significant advantages over materials commonly used in SLS, which tend to be less tough and elastic.

TPU powders are already used in the industrial production of individualized high-perfomance soles for shoes, for example. Those products are formulated and commercialized at key footwear OEMs by Covestro’s partner Lehmann&Voss&Co.

Covestro has been developing systems for stereolithography (SLA), digital light process (DLP) and inkjet printing.

These PU-based resins offer the unique opportunity to customize performance (toughness, flexibility, chemical & weathering resistance) due to the broad range of isocyanates and polyols from Covestro. This chemistry will enable customization of object properties at the voxel level, for example to create gradient materials.