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Arkema invests in American start-up that develops premium polymer resins for additive manufacturing

November, 28, 2020 - Arkema leads the Series B investment in Adaptive3D, an innovative company and premium additive manufacturing photopolymer resin supplier. The investment complements the company´s expertise in UV liquid resin material design and its commitment to accelerate 3D printing manufacturing technology development.

Adaptive3D offers solutions enabling soft and elastomer end-products. The start-up sells photopolymer resins to enable additive manufacturing of tough, strain-tolerant, tear-resistant rubbers.

According to Arkema, Adaptive3D printable photo-resins are optimized for high-throughput manufacturing of functional complex 3-dimensional plastic and rubber parts in a wide range of applications in the consumer goods, healthcare, industrial, transportation and oil and gas markets.

Through its Sartomer’s activity and its N3xtDimension range of UV curable liquid resins, Arkema and Adaptive3D have already succeeded in many technical and commercial developments, Arkema claims. With this announcement, the companies aim to partner across the end points of an additive manufacturing ecosystem, from new material development, scaled specialty resin manufacturing, to functional end-use parts, to deliver market leading materials solutions at scale. By specializing in many other material technologies like photoinitiators and thio-based materials, Arkema says it can further enhance Adaptive3D product offerings through custom solutions.

With this investment in Adaptive3D, Arkema takes a new milestone that will create opportunities for new applications in footwear, medical, automotive and electronic appliances, among others. With materials developed to meet market needs, both consumers and producers stand to benefit from the specialty and sustainable high-performance solutions developed by Arkema and Adaptive3D.

Walter Voit, Founder and CEO of Adaptive3D, says: "Challenging the aging model of injection-molded rubbers, Adaptive3D is now scaling production and distribution to deliver shelf-stable, print-stable, one-part photoresins that yield superior, manufactured end parts. Our resins enable customers to topologically optimize and micro-architect their polymeric products to provide a sustainable competitive advantage now."

"Arkema is a global leader in supplying specialty materials to enable sustainable, innovative solutions to manufacturing technologies. Adaptive3D photo-resins, based on Arkema materials and now validated in the market, further our customer-focused mission to reach into new application spaces. Adaptive3D delivers compelling materials properties with an ease of printing and post processing—a great step forward for the whole additive manufacturing field", comments Sumeet Jain, Senior Director of 3D Printing Worldwide at Arkema.

Source: Arkema