Nexa3D adds high-performance polymer xCE-Black to its arsenal

By Avi Reichental

Here at Nexa3D, we are always looking for new and better ways to innovate. So we are especially excited to announce that we launched xCE-Black, our newest additive manufacturing material.

xCE-Black is a new high-performance polymer, calibrated specifically to produce heavy-duty parts and injection molding tools. It’s a single-cure polymer, and it has high flexural strength — much like dual cure cyanate ester resins. Its isotropic properties make it ideal for automotive, electronics and industrial components.

We found it to be the perfect pinch hitter when we needed to produce thousands of belt pulleys in our flexible factory overnight. Brent Zollinger, customer success lead at Nexa3D, was amazed by how quick and agile the material proved under a high-stress production deadline. Using the new xCE-Black material for the job, he was able to print 2,000 pulleys in a single build in the span of just two and a half hours. That’s 13 parts a minute. And with the material’s long-term stability and flexural strength, it proved extremely practical for serial production of industrial parts.

xCE-Black is also highly adaptable. It can be used to create components for the automotive industry and the electronics industry, producing injection molding tools for a wide range of thermoplastic polymers including PP, PE, HDPE and PETG.

We tested its ability to take the heat, literally, and were quite pleased with the results. Molds printed from xCE-Black were successfully injected hundreds of times at temperatures between 230°C and 280°C without any visible mold temperature degradation or adhesion, and without the use of any mold release agents.

As the world slowly begins to recover from the Covid-19 pandemic, it is more critical than ever before that we deliver greater supply chain resiliency to our customers. I feel confident that xCE-Black will play a key role in this goal: it increases the speed and productivity we can offer our customers, and it’s an ideal complement to our fast industrial printers and our high-performance materials that already exist in our portfolio.

So welcome to the family, xCE-Black. We are delighted to have you as part of our arsenal.

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