Frequently Asked Questions
Last In First Out

 

Can you make a comparison among more RP materials, just to understand which one would suit better different applications?

Besides WINDFORM XT, WINDFORM FX is the material with the HIGHEST SPECIFIC UTS, higher than the other NOT FILLED Selective Laser Sintering MATERIALS but also than all the PARTICLES FILLED SLS MATERIALS and all the HIGH PERFORMANCE SLA MATERIALS. On the other side, WINDFORM FX has the LOWEST SPECIFIC YOUNG MODULUS: this means that it is the most flexible material even having a very high tensile strength and being the lightest. NOT FILLED SLS MATERIALS in fact, having low young modulus values, mainly suit repeated bending and torsion solicitations (fatigue) and should have an excellent crash resistance and a great consistence. This means that WINDFORM FX is the material that suits better this kind of applications.

 

PARTICLES FILLED Selective Laser Sintering MATERIALS are created to have HIGHER SPECIFIC UTS COMBINED WITH HIGHER STIFFNESS (YOUNG MODULUS). LIGHTNESS is one of the KEY PROPERTIES for their standard applications. The properties of these materials are therefore the high resistance at break, the high stiffness and the lightness. WINDFORM PRO is the best placed one, just before WINDFORM PRO B AND WINDFORM GF. The other PARTICLES FILLED SLS MATERIALS have lower values and are generally heavier.

 

The HIGH PERFORMANCE SLA MATERIALS’ data proof that they have a HIGH UTS and a HIGH YOUNG MODULUS, being therefore stiff materials and with a good UTS. The worse property is the weight for sure: they are all the heaviest. Moreover they usually are very brittle and fragile, not suiting therefore repeated solicitations, torsions and crashes.

The Carbon Fibre Filled WINDFORM XT has the HIGHEST SPECIFIC UTS and the HIGHEST SPECIFIC YOUNG MODULUS AT THE SAME TIME. It means it is the lightest material with the best compromise among stiffness, resistance at break, resistance at repeated bending and torsion solicitations and tensile strength. It is the only material able to reach this level.

 

This Rapid Prototyping material comparison is very useful to choose the right material with the right properties for each application.

Is it possible a comparison between 3D System's Accura Bluestone or DSM Somos NanoTool and CRP Windform XT or it's non-sense? I mean, only relating to wind tunnel applications in the racing world.

Most people think the above SLA materials have very strong properties which are ideal for testing thin walls in a wind tunnel environment. (e.g. walls thinner than 3mm).
Bluestone and NanoTool are not new products for Wind Tunnel Rapid Prototyping market: they are good materials for Wind Tunnel applications because they are rigid.

 

	WINDFORM XT	NanoTool (*)	Bluestone
Density g/cm3	1,10	1,65	1,78
UTS Mpa	77,86	73,30	67,00
Modulus Mpa	7320,80	10800,00	9650,00
Specific UTS Mpa/(g/cm3)	70,72	44,42	37,64
Specific Modulus Mpa/(g/cm3)	6649,23	6545,45	5421,35
(*) UV and Thermal Post Cure - Density for solid resin is not declared, we assume the liquid density
RED = Best value
BLUE = Worst Value

In fact, as can be seen from the table above they have higher modulus than WINDFORM XT.

There are 3 additional important factors for Wind Tunnel applications:
 
1) The UTS: It is very important not to have any kind of failure during the wind tunnel tests. So, high UTS is very important and WINDFORM XT offers the highest performance in this area.
2) Water Absorption: In Wind Tunnels a lot of comparison is made between different parts on a daily basis, comparing also “old” parts, made several months before, with new parts. It is important that parts are very stable during this time and ALL SLA parts suffer the issue of Water Absorption (causing distortions). This issue is less of a problem with SLS parts and is unknown with WINDFORM XT.
3) Lightness and Specific properties (UTS and Modulus): A Wind Tunnel model can not have an infinite weight. Weight is not as important as in a real car but can still be an issue within the Wind Tunnel because during the tests, loads and weights are recorded in order to understand if the aero-configuration is improved or enhanced when compared with another configuration. If you have a very heavy model, you loose accuracy and so you can obtain misleading results.

 

Obviously there are some parts such as small nolders or “flicks” that could be better in Bluestone or NanoTool, but in general WINDFORM customers believe that WINDFORM XT is still the best product for Wind Tunnel tests.

 

Can you give a brief update on Windform XT?

 Here it is a useful pdf to download:  wf_intro_220906 484.92 Kb

 

Which positive characteristics and improvements

are reached with WF XT? 

WINDFORM® XT is the original carbon fibre filled PA for laser sintering: its development required long studies and tests and since it has been launched 2 years ago (December 2004) it has been further improved and optimized.
WINDFORM® XT is completely different from all other materials for rapid prototyping techniques, and in particular really far away from Nylon and Nylon GF: its behavior is instead similar to PA6 BG-35, a high-performance material for injection moulding, used for production of the final parts, not only for concept models.
In particular the following characteristics have to be underlined:

 

	Test Method	SI Units	WINDFORM ® XT
GENERAL PROPERTIES
Density (20° C)		g/cm3	1,101
THERMAL PROPERTIES
Melting Point	ASTM D 3418	°C	179,33
HDT, 1.82 Mpa	ASTM D 648	°C	175,4
Vicat 10N	ASTM D 1252	°C	178,1
MECHANICAL PROPERTIES
Tensile Strength	UNI EN ISO 527-1(97) UNI EN ISO 527-2(97)	Mpa	77.85
Tensile Modulus	UNI EN ISO 527-1(97) UNI EN ISO 527-2(97)	Mpa	7320.8
Elongation at break	UNI EN ISO 527-1(97) UNI EN ISO 527-2(97)	%	2,6
Flexural Strength	UNI EN ISO 14125: 2000	Mpa	131,52
Flexural Modulus	UNI EN ISO 14125: 2000	Mpa	6248,5
PROPERTIES PER DENSITY UNIT
UTS per density unit		Mpa/g*cm3	70.71
Tensile modulus per density unit		Mpa/g*cm3	6639.4

Which users exploit the new material (WF XT)

offer? With WINDFORM® XT the purpose of reducing time to market is achieved, guaranteeing reliability, quick time of creation, finished and off-the-shelf products, ready to be tested, and high performance. These characteristics are essential in different sectors such as aerospace, racing, motorsports and automotive, or other sectors as design, packaging, electronics, entertainment, government, consumer products (household appliances), industrial, lighting systems, OEM products, etc. Whenever quality, performance and short times are needed WINDFORM® XT is the right product.

 

Is it possible to find some metal alloys that can be

compared to WINDFORM® XT’s performance?  

 

Specific Properties	A356.0-T6	A5052 H32	WINDFORM® XT
UTS           Mpa/g*cm3	87.6	78.35	70.7
Elongation at break   %	3.5	6-12	2.6

 

To be noticed that there is not such a great difference among the materials specific properties, considering that WINDFORM® XT is polyamide based.

 

Does WINDFORM® XT bring many changes to user

costs or laser sintering process? 

Not always quality and innovation are synonym of high costs.
After 18 months from the launch, the data-file is complete enough to proof how much one can save using WINDFORM® XT: superior properties (to be noted: independent lab tests verify the declared mechanical and thermal properties’ constant value, per each production batch), unquestioned reliability (Certificate of Conformity EN 10204: 2005 Type 3.1 per each production batch) and extremely high recyclability, if compared to standard filled materials for laser sintering. In particular, this last data, if deeply analysed, brings an incredible money saving (see how on: http://www.windform.it/sito/content/view/185/90/lang,en/).
It allows a less waste of material, prolonging the purchase ordering times, and as a consequence lowers the price of the finished product.
Moreover Customer Care is at the first site and CRP offers to the client technical support, Config files for 3D Systems machines, downloading user guide, advices….and much more on: http://www.windform.it/sito/content/view/65/42/lang,en/
and on
http://www.windform.it/sito/content/view/66/43/lang,en/

 

Have you ever tested your parts on a real F1 car, for practice

tests or a race too? So you can really make final parts

and not only prototypes? Of course! We have done a lot of parts for F1 cars. We began with Windform GF, and now we use Windform XT first of all. We make brake ducts, air intakes, cooling ducts, parts of fuel system, bodywork flaps ….and so many other parts… I have to underline that usually we prefer to suggest to customers to use Windform XT for parts that require high UTS, high resistance to vibration and high thermal properties, while Windform GF better suits parts that are in touch with water or fuel. By the way, we made a lot of race weekends, from F1, to MotoGP, WRC…and so on. We run an entire Motorbike World Championship with the chain pad, the head cover, the water pump cover, the seat, the mudguards, some windscreens, the ariboxes of the motorbike (250 cc) all made by Windform GF and XT. Oh, and we can make parts for final street cars: we made some parts for last Gallardo Lamborghini bodywork, and they are just….going around with absolutely no problem, they are even better maybe… The real difference in fact is that our parts, made by RP SLS and Windform materials, finished the race…other tried to do the same with other technology and materials and broke the parts at the pit lane end…

What is typical shipment time in Europe:
We sell ex-works Modena, it means that all the shipment plan, costs and risks, customs duties and brokering too, are responsibility of the customers; anyway we can plan the pick up for our customers and help them to plan the shipment, as customer care service. This way we usually use, for Europe:
FedEx:  3 working days
DHL:  2 working days (our preferred courier extra-Europe too)
Saima Avandero (for big shipments): departure every Tuesday and Thursday, more or less 3 days of shipment time.
Shipment extra-Eu should be planned by the customers with their preferred carrier.

Are the SLS builds available on all three WindForm

materials on a 24x7 basis?
We normally have no problem for WindForm requests.

Or, do you just run one WindForm material each

week or on specific days?
No, we normally work on demand.

Do you have dedicated SLS machines with each

WindForm material in it's own machine?
We normally have 1 machine with WindForm GF, 1 machine with WindForm XT, 3 machines with the possibility to load a specific requested material. Ain fact, we need more or less only 1 hour to change the material on a specific machine. 

What are CRP's turn around times?
Standard Quotation for parts:  1 DAY  after receipt of data file.
Rush Quotation for parts:  FEW HOURS (BUT CONSIDER THE JET-LAG ) after receipt of data file.
Standard Order Build:  2/3 WORKING DAYS, DEPENDING ON SIZE AND DIMENSIONS OF PARTS, after my receipt of purchase order.
Rush Order Build: 1/2 WORKING DAYS, DEPENDING ON SIZE AND DIMENSIONS OF PARTS, after my receipt of purchase order.

We are just trying to best understand how to position your product, to what markets, which industries, and the kinds of products and applications it is a superior choice of material for. Having said that, please add something to better describe the WindForm materials you are offering. 
I can only add that we always preferred to be in a market where the customer need above all performance, high quality, high service, continuous development…and so on: our deep aim, even if we are widening our markets, belongs to races and high tech, so what we really love is to solve particular customer problems and to be in a continuous challenge.
I can say that where there is a problem CRP tries to solve it.
However we already work for Food and Packaging market, Design market, and others…
I think that our TDS and applications suggested per each material are good and actually I don’t think there’s something else to say…maybe it’s better to test them to understand the differences between standard materials and our Windform materials.

Because WindForm GF and now XT somehow performed better in wind tunnel testing?  How much better and what was the resulting improvement?
Actually I can say the Windform materials are the best SLS materials for a lot of applications in Wind Tunnel, this is the reason why many people are still trying to copy them, with sad results. We are also beginning to substitute SLA, thanks WF XT that suits better thin and little flaps too.
The improvement as you can imagine, is the UTS (Ultimate tensile strength), the reliability, resistance to vibrations, the colour (it’s better dark colour for wind tunnel), the stiffness and the detail definition.

Because the F1 teams thought an aluminium filled polyamide was more high-tech material than standard polyamide?
No, F1 teams don’t look for the “feeling” towards a material, they look only for the best performance, the best reliability, colour, surface finish, and so on…I mean, they are interested in the technical performance, not in the material “look”.

WindForm GF offered your customers also better looking parts than standard white coloured polyamide or glass filled polyamide?
Of course, yes, it is.

Because your customer wanted better material properties than standard white polyamide? What physical property improvements were you trying to obtain?
We, of course, every time, tried to realize a material characterized by better mechanical and thermal properties, then we obtained also better surface finish and more precise details.

WindForm GF is a blend of polyamide and aluminium because your customers demanded aluminium material?
Our customers never asked us to develop a particular Aluminium Filled material, there was only a strong need of a different material, characterized by a better performance and a different colour.