Cubicure Gmbh was founded in March 2015 as a spin-off of the TU Wien by Prof. Dr. Jürgen Stampfl (Institute of Material Science and Technology) and Dr. Robert Gmeiner. The company deals with the additive manufacturing of high performance polymers for industrial applications. Here, stereolithography (SLA) is used where light-curable plastics are cured with a laser in a layer-by-layer approach with outstanding precision. Cubicure develops photopolymers of which the properties are like those of technical thermoplastics.
Winning the S2B Award 2015 of the Rudolf Sallinger Fonds and the second place of the funding program “Call Pro Industry 2015” of theVienna Business Agency here the first successes and an early proof of the promising approach of Cubicure.
Since 2017 Cubicure offers a specially developed and patented 3D-printing facility and associated materials in the market. The aim of Cubicure GmbH is the creation of products of highest quality for an industrial production environment.
The technology’s core is a specially developed and patented heating and coating mechanism which is capable of processing resins and pastes of the highest viscosity at operating temperatures up to 120°C.
Elevated temperatures do not only affect the viscosity of a resin, but also its stability and reactivity. Hence, a precise process handling and control is necessary to avoid unintended polymerization and consequently, the degradation of the material. Thus, the temperature of all process elements can be precisely controlled. The biggest challenge was the heating of the coated thin layer of raw material during the printing process. In either case, it is necessary to avoid temperature peaks and local overheating. The specially developed hot coating technology got patented.
For material exposure, a high precision laser-scanner-system is used. Available light wave lengths are 375 nm in the UV range and 405 nm in the visible blue range. The used wave length also allows the processing of filled and colored material systems as well as the printing of transparent and colorless parts.
“Hot Lithography” enables the additive processing of technically relevant plastics of highest precision for the first time!