Two New Engineering Materials: Grey Pro and Rigid

Today we’re excited to announce two new additions to our Engineering Resins library; Grey Pro and Rigid Resin.

Grey Pro Resin is a high precision, moderate elongation, and deformation resistant material that’s ideal for a wide range of engineering applications. Use Grey Pro for applications like form and fit testing, injection molded product prototypes, mold masters for plastics and silicones, and jigs and fixtures for manufacturing.

Rigid Resin is our first glass reinforced material (nice guess @rkagerer). Rigid Resin is a very stiff material with moderate impact strength and high stability over time.Use Rigid Resin to print turbines and fan blades, jigs, fixtures, and tooling, manifolds, housings for electrical and automotive applications, and other parts that require high stiffness, low creep, and high stability over time.

Check out the announcement blog post for more details and a comparison of all six engineering materials.

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Do does grey pro sort of fit between a standard resin and durable?

Now that resins requiring the LT tanks are entering the line up; is there any chance that the ceramic resin will become available soon?

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Great news! Rigid might be just the thing for my new UAV blades. Thanks!

The comparison graphic towards the bottom of this page has been updated to include the new materials which you might find helpful. Grey Pro does have greater elongation than Standard Resin and it’s optimized for deformation resistance over time.

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I get the Rigid formulation, the specs are really interesting and I can’t wait to try it out.

I have trouble seeing the use case of Grey Pro though. It’s noticeably more rigid and supposedly more stable under constant load than Tough, which is good (both are useful in different settings). But when compared to Clear (=Grey Std), it’s impact strength is way worse (by 25%) and that is one or the big downside of Standard resins for engineering applications, Better elongation means we should be able to make press-fit more easily (like dowel pins and bearings), but that’s already possible with Grey Std as long as you have a bit of experience with it, and this slight advantages does not counter the lower impact strength. Did I miss something ? I don’t see myself using Grey Pro instead of Std or Tough right now (EDIT : and I’m using a LOT of Grey Std for our internal tooling needs, where Tough wouldn’t work because it’s not good for constant load applications)

@Frew Is there a chemical compatibility chart available for the engineering materials, similar to this ? If not, can you let us know what the base materials are for the new resins? Thanks!

That was exactly what I wanted to see. Are sample parts available or will they be available soon?

OMG can’t believe I nailed it!

Might be fun to run a competition next time you introduce a new resin (or other mystery product) to let people guess what it is, and reward whoever’s closest with a free cartridge. I’d get a kick out of reading kooky submissions like “Alien Amniotic Fluid Grey” and an even bigger laugh that in a case like this it might actually have won.

I reserve Boaty McBoatresin for your ultra-buoyant material debut.

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Yep, we just consolidated all of the Technical Datasheets into this one form. We haven’t done solvent compatibility testing on the new materials quite yet, but absorption rates are largely a function of material elongation.

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They’re not available currently but will be soon.

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While I’m sure that would be fun, I’m not so sure that I want to incentivize users here to figure out our new products prior to launch. A few of you have demonstrated an impressive level of computer savvy…

April fools day is coming up :wink: I’ll add Boaty McBoatresin to the mix.

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How are print times with Grey Pro vs Tough or Standard? Although tough withstood higher pressures before failure, it wasn’t enough for us to justify the other downsides. This included longer print times, changes to work flow with supports due to higher viscosity and longer post-print cure times.

Differences in print time can be a bit tricky to generalize. We’ll have a new PreForm build out shortly with Grey Pro and Rigid Resin material profiles so that you can compare print times for your parts.

Interested in both materials but thinking I’ll start with the rigid resin.

There would be some advantages to printing vacuum form molds as thin shells with an inexpensive filler material. I’m also interested in printing mold cavities with these materials. The reinforced material might help with some of the failure modes I’ve seen with both the standard and high temp resins.

What are the print resolutions we’re looking at for these materials? 50 and 100 microns? Can’t seem to find them on the new product pages.

Both are 100 microns and 50 microns according to the description in the store.

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I agree that it is filling in a small void that could usually be filled by Tough or Standard. However, in my applications I have found that void to be real. I routinely over-torque bolts and snap my standard resins or drop them 3’ and they shatter. Tough is just not stiff enough for my fixtures though. Hopefully GreyPro fills this void, we shall see.

I noticed that both resins say “Requires Resin Tank LT”. I love the new tank so far (only 10 prints so can’t vouch for the LT yet), and I will fully switch over as soon as the old tanks die. Just curious why it is required for the new resins though.

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Oh definitely. I just feel that this Grey Pro doesn’t really answer your issues (which are the same as mines it appears), as shown in the attached image and from the other available metrics I don’t think that the over-torquing nor the dropping issue will be solved. This looks like a less stiff yet less impact resistant Grey, which is kind of the opposite of what I would have imagined when thinking about a middle ground between Tough and Grey.

@Frew any idea as to when samples will be available ? Thanks!

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Hey Frew, I’m really looking forward to trying out the Grey Pro. I was wondering if you guys have any objective measurements for precision when compared to the standard grey resin?

We use the grey currently for RIM moulds, with relative complexity. It is exceptionally tight tolerance for an SLA part but any boost in dimensional accuracy is always welcomed. Hence the question! Even if you haven’t the full stats, we’re very keen to play with it here.

Thanks!

Since I know next to nothing about how materials properties reflect in real world behavior, I’m curious if anyone can summarize what it means for Grey Pro to have a lower flexural and tensile modulus than standard resin but double the elongation percent. Does that make it more, or less brittle when dropped or struck than standard? Does this mean that it holds it’s shape better? Is amenable to being bent without breaking?