The Ultimaker Materials Alliance is a global partnership programme between Ultimaker and 3D printing material companies. The Appliance sees selected companies develop materials that are optimised for Ultimaker 3D printers, so Ultimaker customers have supported access to a wider range of innovative and unique filaments.
Ultimaker’s portfolio of own-brand 3D printing filaments is renowned for its quality and choice, but different applications call for experimentation. Ultimaker has never shied away from letting customers experiment, however, allowing customers free reign on experimentation with filaments that are untested presents quality issues. The Ultimaker Materials Alliance exists in large part to fix this problem.
The Ultimaker Materials Alliance brings together 3D printing material companies and authorised products and offers these to Ultimaker customers. Although Ultimaker doesn’t sell these filaments, you can buy them through the OEM (or through us) and use them with your Ultimaker 3D printer. In fact, Cura, Ultimaker’s 3D printing software, has profiles for all the materials supported under the Ultimaker Materials Alliance.
Ultimaker Cura has updated material profiles, and these material profiles contain crucial parameters for correct usage. They allow Ultimaker customers to print material without a manual adjustment to the printer settings.
How many contributors are there?
There are more than 80 contributors to the Ultimaker Materials Alliance and those who are in the 3D printing space will recognise many immediately, such as ColorFabb, BASF, Owens Corning, DSM, DuPont, Matterhackers, Eastman, Lehvoss, Solvay, Clariant, Essentium, eSUN, Polymaker, Igus GmbH AND ElogioAM (among others).
It’s important to note that not all the materials made by contributors are supported through the Ultimaker Materials Alliance. The filaments that are supported are fully tested by Ultimaker and their profiles are only released into Cura software when Ultimaker is happy with the results. This is why some materials take longer than others to be released. Some of the filaments are also reformulated for Ultimaker printers.
What materials are available with the Materials Alliance?
First of all, let’s cover Ultimaker’s own material library.
Ultimaker offers the following own-brand filaments for their 3D printers: Tough PLA, ABS, Nylon, CPE, PC, TPU 95A, PP, PVA, Breakaway. These Ultimaker materials are of outstanding quality and can be used for prototypes and end-use parts.
Now, here are some of the filaments supported via the Materials Alliance:
Arkema
- Arkema FluorX™
- Arkema 3DXFLEX™ TPE
Ensinger
- TECAFIL PA6 GF30 black
ColorFabb
- Color On Demand, PLA
- woodFill
Clariant
- PA6/66-GF20 Flame Retardant
- PLA-HI-GF10 3D
- ESD safe PET-G
DSM
- DSM Arnitel® ID 2045
- Novamid® AM1030 FR (F)
- Novamid® ID1030 CF10
Lehvoss
- LEHVOSS LUVOCOM® 3F PET CF 9780 BK
- LUVOCOM 3F PAHT® CF 9891 BK
- LUVOCOM 3F PAHT® 9825 NT
BASF
- BASF Ultrafuse PAHT CF 15
- BASF Ultrafuse 316L
- BASF Ultrafuse ASA
Igus
- Igus iglidur® I150
- Igus iglidur® I180
Owens Corning
- Owens Corning XSTRAND® GF30-PA6
- Owens Corning XSTRAND® GF30-PP
Kimya
- Kimya ABS-ESD Natural
- Kimya PETG Carbon
- Kimya PLA-R
Mitsubishi Chemical
- Mitsubishi Chemical DURABIO™
- Mitsubishi Chemical 3Diakon™
Ultimaker’s plan is to release as many third-party materials as possible into Cura over the next 12 months. This is made possible with the hard work of contributors to the Materials Alliance. “We’ve seen an overwhelming amount of interest in the Ultimaker Material Alliance Program since its launch. In just 12 short months, we’ve worked with many global companies to unlock new applications and have produced some amazing results,” commented Paul Heiden, Senior Vice President of Product Management, Ultimaker.
You will find material profiles for all of the filaments covered above in Cura software. There are hundreds of more 3D printing materials to discover too. If you would like to find out more about them, feel free to reach out to us.