NXT Factory Unveils Revolutionary Quantum-Laser-Sintering

FRANKFURT, Germany, Nov. 14, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- NXT Factory, a pioneer in the development of a game-changing technology called Quantum Laser Sintering (QLS™) today announced that it successfully completed the development phase of a groundbreaking beam delivery system, that converts a single laser into several million microlasers, without power degradation. The company is leveraging this technology into its first industrial-grade high-speed additive manufacturing systems with a clear mandate to replace traditional injection molding of plastic parts at scale. NXT Factory believes that products currently manufactured using injection molding can potentially be produced better, faster and cheaper with NXT Factory's proprietary QLS™ technology.

Nearly two years ago, founders Jakub Graczyk and Tomasz Cieszyński teamed up with Avi Reichental, former President and CEO of 3D Systems, to establish NXT Factory as part of Avi's XponentialWorks Collider, headquartered in Ventura, California.

"Initially our idea was to just develop a low-cost Laser Sintering 3D printer, but after many months of deliberations, we concluded that the world doesn't need another cheap LS 3D printer. Instead, inspired by HP's success with high-speed Jet-Fusion, we decided to go after a factory-floor ready, high-speed thermoplastic 3D printer and create a new category," said Jakub (Kuba) Graczyk, Founder and CEO NXT Factory.

"We challenged ourselves with the question: can you really take the single laser beam and shape it into an entire cross-section of a layer? Or simply put: can you sinter an entire XY slice at once really fast?" said Avi Reichental, NXT Factory's Founder and Executive Chairman. For the ensuing periods, we conducted a tireless bench research and carried out dozens of experiments. Today, after 18 months of bootstrapped research and development, we concluded, that not only it is achievable – but our technology has the potential to de-bottleneck energy delivery in the LS 3D printing process with truly open-ended potential to scale into mass production."

"We have built an actual prototype and it gives us confidence, that it's not just a theoretical engineering exercise, we have actually proved it, again and again," said Tomasz Cieszyński, Founder and CTO.

Unlike traditional laser sintering additive systems that are single beam powered, NXT Factory is the only one that is covering the entire build area at once. It truly is a quantum leap in digital manufacturing so the company appropriately named it, Quantum Laser Sintering (QLS™).

See the Quantum Laser Sintering™ printing process in action here.

At the core of the QLS™ technology, is the proprietary light engine with the ability to multiplex a single laser beam into several million microlasers without power degradation, making it possible to scale without compromising on print speed, accuracy and power delivery. A single beam of a 1070nm laser source travels through beam shaping optics, where it is prepared to enter a projector. High-power projector multiplexes the single beam, reshaping it while harnessing all available power into a full-imaged slice of the entire cross-section of a print layer at once in under 1 second per layer.

While today's laser sintering systems are recognized for their production-grade thermoplastic properties, they are very slow. In fact, energy delivery to the material is the bottleneck of this class of systems. Now, thanks to NXT Factory's revolutionary light engine, the exposure time has been reduced and the amount of energy delivered to material each second exponentially increased. In short, NXT Factory believes that its Quantum Laser Sintering™ technology will be the one to transition additive manufacturing from the lab to the production floor at required manufacturing scale and quality.

NXT Factory is pulling all the stops to ensure that its very first 3D printer, the NXF1, is both cognitive and connected to harness fundamental industry 4.0 capabilities such as big data, cloud computing and sensoring. The company is using proprietary deep-learning algorithms to make real-time predictive and prescriptive choices that are designed to optimize the build performance and deliver the best available parameters. It's like cognitive mold-flow for injection molding but designed specifically for real-time, free-form additive manufacturing.

NXT Factory believes that it is in good company. Some of the best 3D printing industry players are targeting traditional injection molding, coveting to replace and displace this timeless technology with free complexity and tool-less operations. However, try as they all have, thus far, none of the industrial-grade 3D printers on the market, makes the grade of convincingly displacing injection molding, which is the real objective. The bottleneck for all of today's true thermoplastic technologies, is the inability to deliver scalable energy and precise imagery to the material fast enough. Laser sintering 3D printers' speed and part cost, while ideal for prototyping, is not attractive for production. Filament extrusion, while closer in part cost to injection molding is even slower than laser sintering. These technologies have been incrementally and impressively refined for over three decades and quite frankly have largely peaked in their performance. Offering a real tool-less, scalable alternative to traditional injection molding is a blue ocean opportunity that traditional laser sintering and filament extrusion technologies can't effectively address. A survey of the expanding additive universe suggests that the immediate success of the new HP Jet Fusion system bodes well for NXT Factory's QLS™ system as the next step in additive manufacturing of thermoplastics at convincing speed and scale.

All three founders will be on hand at FormNext 2017, where they plan to form several strategic partnerships.

About NXT Factory:

NXT Factory is pioneering the development of Quantum Laser Sintering (QLS™) technology that additively manufactures thermoplastics at convincing speed and scale. The company is leveraging this technology into its first industrial-grade high-speed additive manufacturing systems with a clear mandate to replace traditional injection molding of plastic parts at scale. NXT Factory believes that products currently manufactured using injection molding can potentially be produced better, faster and cheaper with NXT Factory's proprietary QLS™ technology. Our purpose is to accelerate the transition of additive manufacturing from rapid prototyping to industrial strength. We stand on the shoulders of the greatest men and women whom have successfully pioneered additive manufacturing as we know it today and honor them by multiplexing their teachings into an exponential additive technology that is simply unstoppable.

For more information on NXT Factory visit www.NXTFactory.com.

For media and investor inquiries please contact: Kate Li Dennis | e-mail: [email protected]

Related Images

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The NXF1 Machine from NXT Factory

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Avi Reichental

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Jakub Graczyk

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Tomasz Cieszyński

Related Video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-tvvHAq09E

SOURCE NXT Factory

Related Links

http://www.nxtfactory.com