Markforged introduces a new material, Smooth TPU 95A, to its Digital Forge platform and also to the manufacturing industry. The material brings an entirely new set of functional properties to the Digital Forge and adds a substantial amount of versatility to what’s possible with Markforged 3D printers.

Digital Forge is cloud-based, AI-powered, and always improving. It combines software, 3D printers, and materials to be seamlessly connected. This empowers engineers and designers to go from design to fully functional industrial parts more efficiently.

And Markforged Smooth TPU is a 3D printing filament that provides the same functionality of traditionally manufactured parts while giving users the capability to produce custom designs, on demand, at the point of need.

Markforged introduces Smooth TPU 95A for 3D printing.

The traditional methods of producing flexible, rubber-like materials can come with long lead times, expensive start-up costs, and multi-step processing. With the substantial tooling costs required, manufacturing with these types of materials is generally only feasible in high volumes.

Smooth TPU 95A simplifies the process of creating flexible, rubber-like parts that are slow and expensive to obtain in low quantities. With > 500% elongation to break and 95 ShoreA hardness, Smooth TPU is suitable for:

• Replacing traditional manufacturing to produce high-value, flexible, impact-resistant end-use parts when volume isn’t required

• Keeping production lines up when legacy parts are no longer available

• Prototyping for design validation before committing to scaling up production

While the economic benefits of 3D printing TPU are clear, in practice, these filaments are finicky to print. They frequently cause jams, clogs and persistent printer adjustments from print-to-print. After all that frustration, the surface quality of a finished part is oftentimes very poor and unusable.

Smooth TPU offers advantages of accuracy, consistency and surface quality.

However, through systems engineering work, Markforged has merged its materials, hardware and software ingenuity to deliver TPU printing solutions.

"One thing I love about the Smooth TPU solution is that it yields functional parts ready for industrial applications," commented Dan Tuttle, Materials Product Manager at Markforged.

SLA and DLP TPU solutions may provide better feature fidelity, but these cured resin parts don’t stand-up to the loads and stresses of real-world applications. Alternatively, competitive FFF solutions may provide similar tensile and elongation properties, but can't match the accuracy, consistency and surface quality of Smooth TPU.

The company is bridging the gap to provide a solution that meets both the functional and high-quality needs of our customers. And by adjusting slicer settings, it can mimic the same flexibility of an 85 ShoreA gasket, a 90 ShoreA drive belt or a 95 ShoreA shock absorber all on the same spool of filament - Smooth TPU 95A.

Markforged introduces a new material, Smooth TPU 95A, to its Digital Forge platform and also to the manufacturing industry. The material brings an entirely new set of functional properties to the Digital Forge and adds a substantial amount of versatility to what’s possible with Markforged 3D printers.

Digital Forge is cloud-based, AI-powered, and always improving. It combines software, 3D printers, and materials to be seamlessly connected. This empowers engineers and designers to go from design to fully functional industrial parts more efficiently.

And Markforged Smooth TPU is a 3D printing filament that provides the same functionality of traditionally manufactured parts while giving users the capability to produce custom designs, on demand, at the point of need.

Markforged introduces Smooth TPU 95A for 3D printing.

The traditional methods of producing flexible, rubber-like materials can come with long lead times, expensive start-up costs, and multi-step processing. With the substantial tooling costs required, manufacturing with these types of materials is generally only feasible in high volumes.

Smooth TPU 95A simplifies the process of creating flexible, rubber-like parts that are slow and expensive to obtain in low quantities. With > 500% elongation to break and 95 ShoreA hardness, Smooth TPU is suitable for:

• Replacing traditional manufacturing to produce high-value, flexible, impact-resistant end-use parts when volume isn’t required

• Keeping production lines up when legacy parts are no longer available

• Prototyping for design validation before committing to scaling up production

While the economic benefits of 3D printing TPU are clear, in practice, these filaments are finicky to print. They frequently cause jams, clogs and persistent printer adjustments from print-to-print. After all that frustration, the surface quality of a finished part is oftentimes very poor and unusable.

Smooth TPU offers advantages of accuracy, consistency and surface quality.

However, through systems engineering work, Markforged has merged its materials, hardware and software ingenuity to deliver TPU printing solutions.

"One thing I love about the Smooth TPU solution is that it yields functional parts ready for industrial applications," commented Dan Tuttle, Materials Product Manager at Markforged.

SLA and DLP TPU solutions may provide better feature fidelity, but these cured resin parts don’t stand-up to the loads and stresses of real-world applications. Alternatively, competitive FFF solutions may provide similar tensile and elongation properties, but can't match the accuracy, consistency and surface quality of Smooth TPU.

The company is bridging the gap to provide a solution that meets both the functional and high-quality needs of our customers. And by adjusting slicer settings, it can mimic the same flexibility of an 85 ShoreA gasket, a 90 ShoreA drive belt or a 95 ShoreA shock absorber all on the same spool of filament - Smooth TPU 95A.