“Polypropylene is one of the most used plastics available to modern manufacturers and is widely used for a number of applications,” explains Andrea Landoni, 3D printing product manager for Protolabs.
“Until recently, you could only use 3D-printed polypropylene-like materials that mimicked this plastic, but they did not have all of the same properties and were not as durable.
“Now that we can produce a prototype in polypropylene, design engineers can develop and test it in an application using the same material that it will be manufactured from. The product design can then be quickly reiterated and retested until they have the perfect solution, before committing to tooling.
“This breakthrough takes product development to the next level using the most versatile of plastics.”
3D printing polypropylene opens up a whole host of designs with complex geometries that were previously impossible, such as honeycomb structures to reduce weight or organic shapes such as internal channels.
“Before, if you wanted to use polypropylene then you were limited in what you could design by the manufacturing technology available to you. Now the only limitation is your imagination,” continues Landoni.
“There are many times, however, when the best solution for a manufacturer may be to produce polypropylene parts using injection moulding or CNC machining. We can give unbiased advice on which is best to use, because we now offer all three manufacturing technologies.”
