IBEX 365 News
2022 IBEX Innovation Award Interview with Massivit
News Date: May 16, 2023
2022 Winner Interviews
Construction & Repair Materials and Products
New in 2022
Massivit 10000 Additive Manufacturing System
The Massivit 10000 facilitates automated mold production using advanced additive manufacturing. It enables direct printing of complex molds, thereby eliminating the need to produce a plug. This allows manufacturers to reduce their tooling time by 80% and overcome recognized tooling bottlenecks for composite materials manufacturing. It also reduces associated manual labor by 90%.
What problem does this product solve?
We aim to respond to the growing demand for faster mold-production processes. Mold-production methods are hard to scale up to large volumes as they traditionally rely on high-skilled labor that is hard to find or supply chains that are unstable. A secondary problem that we also help to solve is the necessity to store molds over time. By having a digital mold production process, users can choose which molds to physically store and which to store only digitally.
How did you become aware of this problem?
Founded in 2013, our company is relatively young; however, the founders of our company are among the most veteran pioneers of the additive manufacturing and composite industries. Knowing the industry challenges as well as the inherent potential of our technology, we understood how we are able to provide an effective and unique solution.
Who is the target market for this product?
We aim to help boat builders rapidly produce quality molds for composite materials in an automated way that consumes less time and less labor. In addition to that, our system enables the production of external extensions and customization of existing vessels in a quick and digital way using CAD files.
What is noteworthy about the technology used?
Our material provides a true isotropic mold. Our material is thermoset so customers can use all the existing coating and cleaning materials and processes already used with their composite molding. Using the company’s water-breakable material, customers can also produce washable mandrel applications. With our most advanced system, the 10000-G, users can create isotropic molds, as well as many other applications such as prototypes, mockups, aftermarket production and boat customization.
How is it different from any other solution on the market?
Since the printer combines high-speed additive manufacturing and casting processes, the end part has true isotropic properties. This is a very big deal because molds are often put to use under Autoclave or heated temperatures. Having both a low and uniform CTE is critical. Historically, this was hard to achieve using additive manufacturing as bonded layers behave differently than the rest of the part. We have circumvented this issue by only printing the shell; the core material is cast and has no bonded layers.
What customizations are available to personalize this product?
We have six configurations allowing the customer to select between the ability to create molds and the ability to create custom parts or even combine the two into one system.
How has the product been received?
For our first-generation systems, we have more than 200 units installed spread over 40 countries on five continents. The second-generation system, launched in May 2022, is newer but well received with customers in the US, Europe and Israel.
To see all the 2022 IBEX Innovation Award winners, click here.
