German engineering plastics producer Covestro (Leverkusen; www.covestro.com) is developing a comprehensive range of filaments, powders and liquid resins that it sees as suitable for use in all common methods of 3D printing – designing three-dimensional parts of complex geometry on a computer, then using the CAD data to manufacture the parts on a special 3D printer. The former Bayer MaterialScience recently opened a new lab at its headquarters in Leverkusen and is inviting partners to join its competence team in testing material solutions under practical conditions. Prototypes and samples can be fabricated layer by layer at a reasonable cost, it said.

The company believes its efforts will make a key contribution to advancing the use of 3D printing, which it said offers a “major opportunity for efficient mass production of complex or individualised parts.” At the same time, it said widespread use of this new technique will depend on clearing certain hurdles such as the lack of suitable materials. Even if more than 3,000 materials are available for conventional component manufacturing, to date only about 30 are available for 3D printing.

Covestro’s portfolio includes products with properties such as toughness and heat resistance, transparency and flexibility that the company sees as supporting a number of new 3D applications. For the fused filament fabrication process (FFF), products range from flexible thermoplastic polyurethanes to high strength polycarbonate designed for applications such as lighting and design that depend on strength even with exposure to high temperatures. Other products said suitable for 3D applications include TPU powders for selective laser sintering (SLS) and next-generation liquid PU-based resins for industrial additive manufacturing.