bioplasticsMAGAZINE_1406

3D printing
Biobased
Fabrication
Network –
BioFabNet
Fig 1: Open House at the German Government (Berlin).
Center: Ralf Kindervater, BIOPRO, right: Christian Schmidt,
German Federal Minister for Food and Agriculture
In the field of 3D printing, an upcoming innovation factor in
the plastics industry is the fact that the range of available
materials for the so called fused layer modeling method
(FDM) had been limited to polylactic acid (PLA) and acrylnitrile-butadiene-styrene
(ABS) for a long time. Few new and innovative
materials came up only recently and met a large demand
of 3D printing users. Meeting this trend and developing
new FDM-materials originating from renewable resources a
consortium based in Stuttgart, Germany, initiated the project
Biobased Fabrication Network (BioFabNet).
The BioFabNet consortium is lead by BIOPRO Baden-
Württemberg GmbH a public, non-profit innovation agency,
owned by the State of Baden-Württemberg, performing the
network building and support of the associated 3D printing
user community to test and evaluate novel Biobased plastic
materials.
Plastic technology research to develop the novel biobased
materials is performed by the IKT plastics technology Institute
of the University of Stuttgart, where blending, compounding
and filament extrusion is performed.
The Fraunhofer Institute for production technology and
automation (Fraunhofer IPA) has established a 3D-printing
test centre where several commercially available 3D-printers
have been installed jointly with highly specialized 3D printing
heads to pre-evaluate the novel materials, produced by the IKT.
Within the BioFabNet consortium new and innovative
filament materials are being developed using partially or totally
biobased polymers that are based on plant products such as
castor oil, sugar, starch, and lignin or cellulose based on wood.
The dedicated goal of the project BioFabNet is to achieve a
specific publicity for biobased plastic materials and gain an
increased market acceptance for this new material class.
Biobased plastics play an important role in a climate
compatible economy which abstains from the use of fossil
resources, the so called Bioeconomy. In the Bioeconomy of
the future, novel multi-usage cycles and long lasting recycling
procedures are to be established in a Cradle to Cradle way of
thinking and acting.
The molecular integrity of nature-derived structures like
plant fibres or plant oil ingredients, or wood as a complex
structured material, has to be maintained in usage cycles
to a high degree as long as possible, energetic use of such
complex structures should be last in the queue.
By combining novel biobased materials with consumer
used 3D printers a dedicated awareness about these topics
shall be placed widely in the public domain.
For this reason, BioFabNet directly addresses such private
users of 3D printers in order to evaluate novel materials
in a testing community. Currently more than 100 users are
part of the tester group of the BioFabNet, being supplied
with free samples of biobased filament material to perform
a range of 3D printing tasks like printing dedicated testing
rods, a precision printing performance check sample piece,
and some additional material amounts to print a free chosen
sample piece.
In order to bring the tester community in contact with
each other and to get a direct feedback on the 3D printing
experience with regard to the new materials a weblog has
been initiated (www.biofabnet-blog.de).
The project, funded by the German Ministry of Education
and Reseach (BMBF) in the BioIndustry 2021 funding program,
was started in August 2013 and runs for 2 years. The goal is
to develop 4 or 5 novel 3D printing filament materials and get
them evaluated in the user community. Promising materials
shall be commercialized by interested companies in the field
of plastic compounding.
The first material, a blend of PLA and PBAT has been
launched and evaluated by the testing community successfully.
The next 2 materials, another PLA blend and a biobased
polyamide, are currently being processed by IKT and IPA to
send to the testing community in the coming months.
In the run of the project interested companies that want
to commercialize the 3D printing filaments, are welcome to
contact the project consortium.
www.bio-pro.de
By:
Ralf Kindervater
CEO, BIOPRO Baden-Württemberg
Stuttgart, Germany
18 bioplastics MAGAZINE [06/14] Vol. 9