Markforged, Watertown, Mass., creator of the world’s largest metal and carbon fiber industrial 3D printing platform, the Digital Forge, recently unveiled Onyx ESD – a new high-strength composite material for the electronics manufacturing industry. It comes amid growing demand for 3D printing materials that are not only safe for electronics manufacturing, but also produce high-quality and high-strength parts.
This year, many industries have leveraged additive manufacturing to withstand unforeseen supply chain disruptions due to COVID-19. But, use of this technology for the production of electronics, has been limited due to a unique set of barriers.
Electronics manufacturers must use materials that meet electrostatic discharge (ESD) safety requirements to avoid damaging a product or critical component during production. Previously available additive manufacturing materials were considered low quality — with inconsistent ESD-safe properties, inadequate dimensional accuracy, poor surface finish, or low strength. As a result, adoption of 3D printing technology by electronics manufacturers has been limited.
Now, with the launch of Onyx ESD, electronics manufacturers can unleash the power of additive manufacturing. This material is a high-performance static-dissipative version of Markforged’s flagship composite base material Onyx, a micro carbon fiber-filled nylon that yields accurate parts with impeccable surface finish. Onyx ESD was developed to achieve an extremely tight surface resistance range to consistently meet strict ESD-safe requirements.
The material can be reinforced with continuous carbon fiber, creating the strongest 3D printed composite parts available to the electronics manufacturing industry. When printing with Onyx ESD, electronics manufacturers can safely produce strong, accurate tools and fixtures ready for the manufacturing floor, as well as high-quality customer-ready parts.
For more information:
Markforged
https://markforged.com/materials/plastics/onyx-esd
Image – An electronic component 3D printed using Onyx ESD from Markforged. Courtesy of Markforged.
