Stratasys extends prototyping possibilities with the new J55 Prime

By Editorial On Jun 19, 2021

Today we announced the introduction of the Stratasys J55^™ Prime 3D printer. This new addition to the Stratasys portfolio of PolyJet^™ printers builds on the rotational printing technology introduced in 2020. This new model goes beyond full-color printing with new materials that enable tactile, textual, and sensory capabilities on top of the existing highly realistic visual models utilizing multi-materials that cater to design, functional and biocompatible prototyping.

The extended set of materials for the J55 Prime includes glass and rubber-like textures, as well as high-impact materials to create full-color, highly functional, and tactile 3D prototypes. Now, designers and engineers can go beyond their existing design possibilities and take their ideas from concept to reality quicker and in a more realistic style. New materials include:

Elastico^™ Clear and Elastico^™ Black for flexible, soft-touch printing that accurately simulates the look, feel, and function of rubber-like products.
Digital ABS^™ Ivory for high-impact designs such as molds, jigs, fixtures, and functional prototypes.
Vero^™ContactClear, a translucent material designed for prolonged skin or bodily contacts such as medical devices, sportswear, or wearables.
Ultra-opaque colors, enabled by the VeroUltra^™ family of materials, introduce 2D level graphics and text, vibrant and accurate colors with better plastic simulation, raising the bar in 3D printed multi-material models.

“We have opened up an entirely new set of product design prototype possibilities by giving our designers the ability to print whatever they can imagine. With the J55 Prime, we can create prototypes, and various iterations of them, quickly and with realistic characteristics unlike ever before,” says Tony Guard for Kinetic Vision, a product design firm based in Cincinnati, Ohio, USA. “We can provide our customers with a prototype that mimics the different colors, textures, or elasticity of their product; they can see what the glass may look like, they can accurately see and choose colors. All in, customers are able to make more informed decisions about the design of their end product.”

With these new materials, in combination with those previously available on the J55 printer, users can print prototypes that realistically mimic the end-product visually, tactilely, and functionally. To further increase the fidelity of their prototypes, users can print in over 640,000 distinguishable color combinations and match more than 1,900 printable PANTONE^® Colors, Solid Coated and SkinTones^™ with Stratasys CMYK colors. And, with the small footprint, easy set-up, and remote operation capabilities of the J55 Prime, this can all be accomplished in-house, quickly, and without the need for a shop operator or external service bureau.

“With the new J55 Prime state-of-the-art materials, designers can ‘dream big’, imagining the possibilities and actually bring them to life with realistic looking and feeling materials; if they can dream it, they can print it. Our customers will also realize other benefits from these new materials including a reduction in time spent on manual modeling and the ability to present a client with multiple color or pattern iterations of a product prototype, leading to better productivity, less re-work and increased end product satisfaction.”

Shamir Shoham, vice president of design at Stratasys

The J55 Prime is the perfect addition to any design or engineering office with its compact design and odor-free and quiet operation. To bring their concepts to reality, designers can use a simplified workflow and import native CAD or 3MF file format to send models to the J55 Prime using GrabCAD Print^™ software.

Orders are being taken now for the J55 Prime, with shipping expected to start in July 2021.

This content was originally published on the Stratasys website.