netfabb Now Enables Automatic Support Generation

netfabb Support Structures add-on improves industrial additive manufacturing of metal parts

The German 3D printing software supplier netfabb has released the new Support Structures add-on as a substantial addition to the netfabb 6 suite of software for 3D Printing and Additive Manufacturing. The focus of the new generation 6 is set upon simplifying and improving 3D printing processes on an industrial scale. In this context the new add-on is specially designed for the advanced support generation for Selective Laser Melting, Stereolithography, and DLP technology.

netfabb is being much talked about these days. Only recently, the Germany-based specialist for 3D printing software announced the foundation of the 3MF Consortium, together with Microsoft, HP, Autodesk, Dassault Systèmes, Shapeways, and SLM Solutions. In the meantime, more market leaders within the industry have joined the ranks which is a clear sign that the new open and royalty-free 3MF format will be the dominant additive manufacturing format for the future. As chair of the consortium’s technical working group, netfabb ensures full compliance with the new standard in all of their products. Now a powerful new add-on to netfabb Professional 6 provides an easy way to prepare data for industrial 3D printing.

Support generation–an important issue in creating printable data

The new add-on empowers netfabb Professional 6 to easily add support lattices and structures to parts in additive manufacturing. This happens by creating bar support structures and adjusting the anchor points between the part and the platform as needed. This ensures that the full productive capability of AM machines using Selective Laser Melting, Stereolithography, and DLP technology can be utilized.
The netfabb support structures add-on comes in two variants: netfabb DLP Support Structures add-on is designed specifically for manufacture on Digital Light Processing (DLP) machines, and netfabb Enhanced Support Structures for manufacture on machines using Selective Laser Melting (SLM), Stereolithography (SLA), and FDM (Fused Deposition Modeling).

A huge number of settings for an optimum support generation

Three general types of support structures can be chosen as required by the part's geometry: bar support, polyline support, and full volume support. A huge number of features and options grants full flexibility to the designer. For example, different types of support structures can be combined on the same model, to different part areas and to different angles. If needed, even curved and ramified bars that look like tree branches can be created. Polyline support allows not only to build a simple thin or thick wall support but a structured wall, just by a few clicks. And last but not least, volume support extends the polyline support by an additional dimension, offering 37 different settings in total.

Speed up the processes of data preparation for Additive Manufacturing

More practical features like a transparent part view and an overview list of all used support entities help to ease the designer's workload. Very useful is also the automatic downskin analysis of data models to determine which areas do require some support. For more info and screenshots, please visit:
http://www.netfabb.com/support_structures.php

A keen interest in industrial use of Additive Design and Manufacturing

Currently, manufacturing is subject to a fundamental paradigm change. Many companies consider introducing additive manufacturing for their business. “In this period of important change, netfabb Professional 6 has the potential to lift additive manufacturing to an unprecedented level of volume manufacturing”, explains Ulf Lindhe, Director of Business Development at netfabb. “Risk reduction, easy maintenance, process reliability, and a whole lot of time savings are the keywords to describe the benefits of using netfabb software.” With the add-on netfabb Selective Space Structures (3S), innovative products using complex structures can be created. Also new is netfabb Enterprise 6 which comes with a cost-saving server licensing model.

More information online: www.netfabb.com/support_structures.php

About FIT Group and netfabb
Founded in 1995, FIT AG is a leading German provider of rapid prototyping services, additive design and manufacturing (“ADM”) and 3D printing software via its subsidiaries FIT Prototyping GmbH, FIT Production GmbH and netfabb GmbH. Group revenue in 2014 was EUR 16.8 million – an increase of forty per cent versus prior year, with netfabb contributing EUR 3.8 million (up 370 per cent). FIT employs approx. 190 people, most of them at the company’s headquarters in Lupburg, Germany. The FIT Group operates two further subsidiaries, FIT Nord GmbH near Hamburg, Germany, and FIT West Corp. in Santa Clara (CA), USA.

More information online: www.pro-fit.de and www.netfabb.com

Elisabeth Bauer
FIT AG / netfabb GmbH
Eichenbuehl 10
92331 Lupburg

Phone: +49 (0) 9492-9429-43
Fax: +49 (0) 9492-9429-11
E-Mail: pr@pro-fit.de, pr@netfabb.com
Web: www.pro-fit.de, www.netfabb.com

This release was published on openPR.