Further funding injection for 3D printing company

Now the spin-off Head­made Mate­ri­als of the SKZ Plas­tics Cen­ter impress­es with a fur­ther financ­ing of EUR 8.25 mil­lion and thus stands for the suc­cess­ful trans­fer from sci­ence to indus­try. Head­made Mate­ri­als will use the new funds for a strong expan­sion of its own pro­duc­tion capac­i­ties, exten­sion of inter­na­tion­al sales and prod­uct port­fo­lio. SKZ has sup­port­ed Head­made Mate­ri­als from the begin­ning and is par­tic­u­lar­ly pleased with the impres­sive devel­op­ment over the past years and the suc­cess­ful new financing.

Orig­i­nal­ly, the com­pa­ny was spun out of the Cen­ter for Addi­tive Pro­duc­tion (CAP), the com­pe­tence cen­ter for 3D print­ing process­es in Würzburg, with the sup­port of fund­ing from the BMBF’s EXIST research trans­fer pro­gram. The busi­ness idea of the two founders Chris­t­ian Fis­ch­er and Chris­t­ian Staudi­gel is based on a self-devel­oped sin­ter-based 3D print­ing process Cold­Met­al­Fu­sion (‘Met­al SLS’) for metal­lic 3D print­ing of series com­po­nents. This process uses the tech­nolo­gies and mate­ri­als estab­lished by the MIM (‘Met­al Injec­tion Mold­ing’) injec­tion mold­ing process for the 3D print­ing of components.

All the advan­tages of addi­tive man­u­fac­tur­ing in pow­der bed process­es come into play: com­plex com­po­nents can be pro­duced with­out sup­port geom­e­try on plas­tic laser sin­ter­ing (LS) sys­tems and become high-den­si­ty and stress-free met­al com­po­nents via the debind­ing and sin­ter­ing process­es famil­iar from MIM. The high green part strength of the sin­tered com­po­nents is also out­stand­ing, enabling inter­me­di­ate pro­cess­ing steps and trou­ble-free han­dling. Through the fur­ther devel­op­ment of the mate­r­i­al range, Head­made Mate­ri­als has very con­vinc­ing­ly suc­ceed­ed in enabling the print­ing process on com­mer­cial­ly avail­able LS equip­ment from a wide range of man­u­fac­tur­ers, as well as sig­nif­i­cant­ly facil­i­tat­ing process inte­gra­tion and part certification.

Expansion of the 3D printing material range

For more than ten years, the Plas­tics Cen­ter has seen itself as a cen­tral and inde­pen­dent point of con­tact for indus­tri­al com­pa­nies on all estab­lished 3D print­ing process­es, the asso­ci­at­ed mate­r­i­al devel­op­ment, nec­es­sary qual­i­ty assur­ance mea­sures and the train­ing of employ­ees. The suc­cess of Head­made Mate­ri­als with inno­v­a­tive tech­nolo­gies for 3D print­ing met­al com­po­nents is a par­tic­u­lar­ly wel­come devel­op­ment, as it has expand­ed 3D print­ing to a wide range of mate­ri­als and thus to diverse and very inter­est­ing areas of application.

“The cen­ter, the insti­tute man­age­ment and the for­mer col­leagues con­grat­u­late very warm­ly on this suc­cess and are pleased to have con­tributed here as pio­neers,” says insti­tute direc­tor Prof. Dr.-Ing. Mar­tin Bas­t­ian happily.

“It is real­ly impres­sive in what a short time the two founders and their team have suc­ceed­ed in devel­op­ing the Cold­Met­al­Fu­sion process to mar­ket matu­ri­ty and estab­lish­ing it on the mar­ket. In addi­tion, first joint research projects between SKZ and Head­made Mate­ri­als show inno­v­a­tive syn­er­gies. We look for­ward to fur­ther coop­er­a­tion and wish the com­pa­ny con­tin­ued very suc­cess­ful devel­op­ment and imple­men­ta­tion of the next com­pa­ny milestones.”

- Georg Schwalme, Divi­sion Man­ag­er Injec­tion Mold­ing & Addi­tive Manufacturing