Xact Metal extends relationship with Materialise, partners with Oqton
May 5, 2023
Xact Metal, State College, Pennsylvania, USA, has announced the extension of its partnership with Materialise, Leuven, Belgium, and its Additive Manufacturing software suite Magics. Xact has also entered into an agreement with software provider Oqton, Ghent, Belgium.
Materialise Magics is a data and build preparation suite which includes CAD, mesh tools, automatic support generation, build preparation and tool path generation. Its most recent updates have included Workflow Automation, which offers custom scripts to automate repetitive workflows. The software is now also integrated with CO-AM, the company’s cloud-based software platform, supporting traceability in the Additive Manufacturing.
“We have been working with Materialise since the foundation of Xact Metal six years ago”, stated Juan Mario Gomez, Xact Metal CEO. “For over twenty years Materialise has been a front runner in the success industrial adoption of metal power bed fusion. We have worked together to bring new solutions including Materialise Print for Xact Metal, Materialise Auto-Scaffold for Xact Metal, the Dental Module, and Multi-Optic Laser Control.”
“We are pleased to extend our partnership with Materialise as we continue to aim to make metal 3D printing not only affordable, but easy to use,” Gomez continued. “Materialise’s products compliment the Xact Metal mission and have been a factor in our success. To date, we have over 100 installations of Materialise software supporting our metal 3D printers at our customers and sales partners around the world.”
Through Xact’s partnership with Oqton, the companies intend to integrate Oqton’s Manufacturing OS and 3DXpert and Xact Metal’s portfolio of metal Additive Manufacturing technologies in an effort to deliver affordable automation and full process control. This is intended to empower a range of users to realise the benefits of metal AM for R&D and production applications in a variety of industries.
Manufacturers in industrial and healthcare markets require a scalable combination of Additive Manufacturing software and hardware to meet their unique business requirements and help them maintain a competitive advantage.
Benefits of the companies’ respective offerings include:
- Oqton Manufacturing OS: provides a unified user experience that deploys AI across manufacturers’ end-to-end engineering and production workflows for significant process efficiency gains. For example, dental laboratories using Manufacturing OS have been able to achieve up to 90% faster data preparation time with the software’s smart automation
- 3DXpert: an all-in-one Additive Manufacturing software that streamlines the workflow by preparing, optimising, and AM high-quality parts. 3DXpert reportedly enables up to 75% faster file preparation because of its superior DfAM and build prep functions which are built on an industrial CAD engine
- Xact Metal solutions a range of metal AM products to create solutions from entry-level to large-scale at affordable prices. On average, Xact Metal solutions are one-third of the price of other available Additive Manufacturing machines with similar build volumes and capabilities. Each solution is built on a similar architecture which allows customers to scale their solutions as demand increases
As a result of this partnership, Xact Metal customers are expected to be well placed to address more applications using the in-depth features and built-in automation of Oqton’s 3DXpert and Manufacturing OS. Through the expansion of Oqton’s ecosystem on a new printing platform, the company’s customers are able to more easily adopt metal AM through a solution that meets their unique manufacturing requirements.
“The partnership we’re announcing today with Xact Metal will enable a broader range of manufacturers to embrace AM to accelerate their innovation,” added Roy Sterenthal, vice president, industrial additive, Oqton. “Our integrated solutions are bringing together the latest in AI and metal Additive Manufacturing to deliver a complete, cloud-accessible, automated workflow. This allows us to deliver solutions for a variety of users and manufacturers from small industrial manufacturers to dental laboratories with high-volume, AI-driven production automation.”
Juan Mario Gomez concluded, “We are excited to announce our partnership with Oqton. Expanding our software options with Oqton’s solutions is the next step in our journey to expand access to metal 3D printing technology. Existing users of 3DXpert and Manufacturing OS no longer are required to learn new software to begin printing on Xact Metal printers. Oqton’s 3DXpert brings high-performing printing capabilities to our customers while Oqton’s dental software provides AI-driven proven solutions resulting in an easy-to-use workflow in dental applications.”
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