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Henkel (Düsseldorf, Germany) announced March 20 that it is accelerating its commercialization of tailor-made materials and is offering comprehensive services and equipment know-how for 3D printing solutions to its customers. The adhesive technologies business unit strengthens its ecosystem by expanding strategic partnerships with global technology leaders to drive adoption in the rapidly growing market for additive manufacturing beyond prototyping to final parts production.

Henkel Adhesive Technologies is supplying customers worldwide with a broad portfolio of high-performance materials such as light cure acrylic, silicone, epoxy and polyurethane adhesives. The business unit develops tailor-made products and services to provide high- impact solutions to various industry segments. Based on its technical expertise and know-how, Henkel has now developed novel materials customized for various 3D printing processes and technologies.

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To accelerate the industrial usage of 3D printing solutions, Henkel in addition offers a growing portfolio of services and equipment. This includes specialized enabling equipment for automation as well as solutions for curing, impregnation and surface treatment in post- processing. This range of products and services has further strengthened the company ́s additive manufacturing ecosystem and accelerates the integration of 3D printed parts into the industrial assembly and supply chain infrastructure.

“We believe that the full potential of additive manufacturing will come by identifying the right customer application and focusing the right materials, with the right printing process and leveraging the right software,” says Philipp Loosen, head of 3D printing at Henkel Adhesive Technologies. “We have therefore partnered with strong technology leaders such as Carbon (Redwood City, CA, US) and Hewlett-Packard (HP, Palo Alto, CA, US), which already have developed exciting technologies for 3D printing solutions. These collaborations enable us to leverage our broad materials know-how and customer access to develop new solutions for industrial manufacturing.”

Together with Carbon, Henkel is working on materials and specialized dispensing equipment for polymerization-based 3D printing technologies. The companies have developed a meter mix and dispense device (MMD), a resin dispensing system and accessory to Carbon’s SpeedCell manufacturing system that allows for proper dispensing of Carbon’s materials in bulk quantities. Additionally, Henkel is beginning the development of Loctite resins for Carbon’s materials ecosystem.

Together with HP, Henkel is already working in HP ́s open materials community to develop materials for HP’s powder fusion based jet fusion technology. In addition, the company has become the first global reseller of HP Jet Fusion 3D Printing solutions to enable qualifications among industrial production.