ESA BIC 9T Labs: 3D CLF printing in carbon fiber materials

High strength, lightweight materials are key in many industries, ranging from space and automotive to medical and special equipment.

One of these materials is carbon fiber reinforced plastic, CFRP, with an annual market growth rate of 14% and estimated to $37bn market size in 2020. However, producing CFRP products involves manufacturing methods that are expensive and time-consuming, especially for low-volume production and prototyping.

3D-printing has proven extremely successful in making it possible to manufacture parts cheaper and easier than metals and plastics, with an extremely high annual growth rates of 37% towards a projected $25bn in 2020 market size.

Considering the above two trends, it is clear that a great opportunity exists in developing 3D-printing equipment for CFRP materials.

The proprietary technology that 9T Labs has developed, Continuous Lattice Fabrication (CLF), is a 3D-printing (i.e. additive manufacturing) technology for carbon fiber materials. The system allows the processing of continuous fibers that can be manipulated to reinforce the build part in all spatial directions (x, y, z), while also achieving high part quality with fiber content >50%.

Reinforced materials include, but are not limited to, plastics such as PPS, PEI, PEEK and PA12. Other important differentiators include a scalable extrusion diameter, using inexpensive unprepared material as feedstock and intelligent software that continuously learns to build better parts.

This all enables the production of structurally optimized designs, local production, high functional integration and multi-material printing. Research institutes and industry leaders in automotive, space, medical and special equipment building have expressed serious interest in 9T Labs` printing technology.

One proof of concept was successfully demonstrated to a large aerospace company.

By iterating on the current prototype, the company is now developing a printer aimed at conducting research to be ready within 12 months to research institutes, universities and research departments in large companies. Also an industry printer will be launched in order to open doors to high-performance prototyping and customized manufacturing.

ESA BIC Switzerland and the ESA BIC network

9T Labs was founded as a ETH Zurich spin-off end of January 2018, and now part of ESA BIC Switzerland

ESA BIC Switzerland is part of ESA´s Technology Transfer and Business Incubation Space Solutions Programme, which has created the world’s largest ecosystem for space related Entrepreneurship. The 18 ESA Business Incubation Centres (ESA BICs) support 160 companies per year and more than 600 new start-ups have so far been fostered.

At the ILA Future Lab ”FUEL FOR INNOVATION” meet 9T Labs and other disruptive ESA start-ups together with Head of ESA Technology Transfer and Business Incubation Centre Office Frank M. Salzgeber, ESA BIC Manager Frank Zimmermann and Sabine Dannelke, the Head of Division Satellite Navigation/Galileo, Digitalization of Public Transport at the Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure in Berlin, Germany,

The ILA Future Lab ”FUEL FOR INNOVATION” takes place in the FORUM Hall 2/204 at ILA in Berlin on Thursday 26 April 13:15 – 14:45.