Materialise Announces Collaborations and Software Updates to Increase Customization in 3D Printing

"3D printing is evolving from a focus on technology innovation to becoming an essential tool in industrial applications,” said Udo Eberlein, Vice President of Materialise Software. “The next phase is about empowering users to adapt this technology to their specific manufacturing needs. With our latest updates, we’re providing the tools and flexibility to help them meet these unique requirements. This ‘power to the people’ approach underscores our commitment to enabling manufacturers to achieve precise, impactful results in their production workflows."

3D printing is being integrated into production lines for mass customization, series, and end-use production across industries including medtech, aerospace, and consumer goods. Traditional manufacturers strive to maximize profitability by optimizing every stage of the production process, and they want to do the same for 3D printing within their manufacturing workflow. 

To support these optimization efforts, Materialise has opened the software development kit (SDK) for Magics, its premier software for data and build preparation, making it easier for manufacturers to increase efficiency in the 3D printing process. Users can now create custom workflows using Python and C++ scripts. This is helpful for those who choose to optimize for quality, printing time, and more to meet their specific manufacturing requirements. 

“We've seen tremendous potential for businesses to optimize their workflows with the Magics SDK, enabling enhanced manufacturing processes and substantial improvements in ROI,” said Egwin Bovyn, Product Line Manager, Magics 3D Print Suite. “At Materialise, we’ve customized our SDK to optimize data and build preparation in our own manufacturing operations. By sharing our algorithms via Python code, we enable the automation of data and build preparation at scale. These advanced automation tools empower manufacturing service providers by ensuring our technology meets their individual needs." 

Organizations looking to integrate 3D printing into their existing manufacturing operations often lack the resources to define their own business requirements and develop workflows. To support these efforts, Materialise offers expertise to help businesses identify opportunities for customization and improvement and guide them through their transition to production.

Component orientation is essential when preparing a platform for metal laser powder bed fusion to reduce support structures, manage heat distribution, improve surface quality, minimize build time and cost, ensure dimensional accuracy, and facilitate powder removal.

To support users in this critical step, Materialise is introducing its Orientation Comparison capability within e-Stage for Metal+. In addition to existing support optimization for a given orientation, this new feature will compare any set of given orientations and report on cost- and quality-related parameters such as build height, max XY cross-section, and mean and max deviation of the different simulation results.

The update will allow less experienced users to quickly evaluate and compare different options to understand what yields an optimal orientation. It will help more experienced users screen their options and optimize based on cost and quality.

Earlier this year, Materialise announced a partnership with nTop to integrate nTop Core into Magics, enabling users to design high-performant geometries that can be processed by the Materialise Next-Gen Build Processor. The companies launched an early access program in June, with an initial cohort of 10 companies, including industry leaders from aerospace, automotive, Formula 1, medtech, and research institutions.  

Materialise has now extended this capability to several leading 3D printer OEMs, including Additive Industries, Renishaw, and Stratasys, which will collaborate with Materialise to invest in the development of Next-Gen Build Processors. Materialise’s Next-Gen Build Processor is configurable software that translates large and complex 3D design files into 3D printable instructions, optimizing and managing the 3D printing process from start to finish.

Additionally, Materialise and nTop have partnered to ensure that all new Next-Gen Build Processors will have the option to include the nTop implicit modeling kernel out of the box. This will enable users to easily transfer highly complex, high-performance geometries directly to Magics without the need for time-consuming translations in build preparation and production.

"nTop's leading modeling technology enables our customers to design some of the most advanced and complex products on the planet,” said Bradley Rothenberg, CEO and Founder of nTop. “In partnering with Materialise to now be able to 3D print directly from nTop models, our customers have access to the fastest and most reliable design-to-manufacture process, removing the need for a slow and painful conversion from lightweight nTop models to heavy and fragile meshes or boundary representations."

Sustainability is central to Materialise’s mission to create a better, healthier world, and our efforts reflect this commitment. In 2022, we transitioned to renewable electricity across our production sites and most offices, reducing over 4,000 tonnes of CO2 annually. Our software innovations also reduce scrap rates, material use, and increase the efficiency of our 3D printing processes, all essential to achieving a 55% reduction in CO2 emissions by 2029.

Reducing emissions further requires collaboration with upstream suppliers like HP to lower the impact of materials such as PA 12, the most used plastic material in the 3D printing industry. Earlier this year, we switched to carbon-reduced PA 12 for Multi Jet Fusion (MJF), with plans to do the same for SLS PA 12 in early 2025, which will reduce our carbon footprint by over 700 tonnes each year. The carbon-reduced PA 12 powder sits beside other initiatives to reduce raw material emissions by optimizing our production processes and repurposing powder, with the option of reusing it or giving it an alternative life.

At Formnext, Materialise entered into a long-term agreement with BLT, a prominent industrial metal 3D printing turnkey solution provider. This partnership will integrate Materialise’s software solutions with BLT’s advanced metal 3D printing systems, offering customers a comprehensive additive manufacturing solution designed to enhance production efficiency, reduce costs, and accelerate product innovation.

The collaboration between Materialise and BLT extends beyond software and hardware integration, with plans for joint research into new printing technologies, development of industry-specific solutions, and promotion of additive manufacturing across key sectors, including personalized healthcare, aerospace, and automotive design.

Materialise will showcase these technologies, as well as use cases of 3D printing’s capabilities in serial and certified manufacturing, during Formnext in Hall 12.1, booth C139 in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, November 19 – 22.

About Materialise

Materialise incorporates more than three decades of 3D printing experience into a range of software solutions and 3D printing services that empower sustainable 3D printing applications. Our open, secure, and flexible end-to-end solutions enable industrial manufacturing and mass personalization in various industries — including healthcare, automotive, aerospace, eyewear, art and design, wearables, and consumer goods. Headquartered in Belgium and with branches worldwide, Materialise combines the largest group of software developers in the industry with one of the world's largest and most complete 3D printing facilities