Wear-Resistant Blue Laser-Sintering Material Ensures Food Safety

Manufacturers of machines and equipment for the food and beverage industry are active users of 3D printing, but nowadays they want blue printing material. The color blue is easy to see, and if a 3D printed component breaks, blue fragments in the product can be quickly detected with sensors. However, there are said to be few blue printing materials on the market that are robust, food-compliant and suited to the selective laser-sintering (SLS) process.

That’s why igus has come out with iglide i6-Blue, a blue-colored powder said to be compatible with all common SLS printers. Like other iglide printing materials, it is wear resistant and self-lubricating, and it reportedly meets FDA and EU 10/2011 food-contact specs. It contains solid lubricants and eliminates the need for external lubrication of moving parts, thereby avoiding possible contamination of foods. The proprietary iglide resin said to be especially suitable for printing worm gears and toothed gears for machinery used in the food and beverage industry. It is resistant to temperatures from -40°C/F to 80°C/176°F. According to in-house testing by igus, 3D-printed gears of the new material have much longer service life than wheels milled out of acetal and are at least nine times more abrasion resistant than SLS-printed nylon 12. The igus material’s high elongation at break also suits it to snap-on connections.

Because the new printing powder is colored blue, it produces printed parts that are blue throughout, not just on the surface, so all possible fragments of a broken part would be blue to aid detection. Machinery OEMs who do not have the own 3D printer can order parts from igus’ printing service, with no minimum order quantity.