BEGO and Blackbelt conclude a license agreement

BEGO and Blackbelt Holding (Blackbelt for short), which owns the two companies Blackbelt 3D and PodoPrinter, have signed a license agreement. This allows Blackbelt to use property rights from BEGO and VoxelJet for the continuous printing of a thermoplastic.

Mr. Humez, Managing Director of BEGO Medical says: "We are pleased that with Blackbelt we have an innovative licensee who uses this technology. As a result, the use of 3D printing technology is increasingly moving away from pure rapid prototyping production towards mass production or continuous printing. The 3D printing industry is one of the most competitive in the world and the licensing agreement strengthens the position of Blackbelt and BEGO. We see this as confirmation of our strategy to invest in new technologies and to be one of the innovators in the 3D printing industry.”

BEGO is one of the leading dental specialists worldwide. As early as 2001, she introduced additive manufacturing technology with selective laser melting (SLM) to the dental industry. Considerations to convert batch production, in which a certain number of data records are first collected and then the production of the corresponding components begins, to continuous production, in which data records are continuously sent to the printer and components are removed about this invention, which was patented in 2011.

In 2017, the Blackbelt 3D printer was the first commercially available 3D printer to use the FFF (fused filament fabrication) process in combination with innovative assembly line technology. By printing layers oriented at an angle to the substrate plane, in combination with the conveyor, it is possible to print both long objects with no limitation in the z-axis and continuously print a large number of objects.

With PodoPrinter, Blackbelt's solution was combined with a special foam filament and special CAD software. This resulted in the 3D printer SOLE (see the following pictures). This printer allows the user to create shoe insoles with the push of a button in a simple, integrated workflow without having to have any knowledge of 3D printing.