LEVERAGING its global technology centers in Saudi Arabia, the Americas, Europe, and Asia, SABIC has announced that it is expanding the company's application development focus in additive manufacturing technology. The move further underscores SABIC's commitment to this evolving technology that is pushing the industry to rapidly develop new materials and processes that can help to achieve improved performance, complex designs, enhanced aesthetics and more economical part builds. SABIC's capabilities and experience in additive manufacturing across a number of industries will enable it to work closely with technology innovators including universities, research laboratories, printer manufacturers, OEMs and emerging technology companies to help accelerate the advancements necessary for additive manufacturing to reach its full potential. “The insights and technology developments coming from SABIC will deepen the understanding of the critical link between materials, design, processing and part performance needed to expand the technology from functional prototyping to real-world part production,” said Ernesto Occhiello, executive vice president, Technology & Innovation at SABIC. “Continuing to invest in capabilities and equipment to support the development of high performance materials for existing additive manufacturing processes as well as new, emerging technologies is a key enabler of SABIC's strategy to help our customers address their constant challenge of lowering the cost to innovate and bringing their designs to market more quickly.” SABIC's success with additive manufacturing has been driven in large part by the company's holistic approach to this technology. From a broad portfolio of high performance materials, to design and processing expertise, to state-of-the-art equipment, SABIC provides a highly supportive research environment for material optimization, testing and designing for additive manufacturing processes. At the NPE2015 in Orlando, Florida, from March 23-27, SABIC held a technical seminar focused on the potential of additive manufacturing technologies for the injection molding industry and the new space it provides for innovative thinking in plastic application development and the related tooling. The seminar demonstrated how 3D printed metal tools for cavities and cores with conformal cooling designs have been utilized to achieve better efficiencies and improved cycle times. Saudi Basic Industries Corporation (SABIC) ranks as the world's second largest diversified chemical company. The company is among the world's market leaders in the production of polyethylene, polypropylene and other advanced thermoplastics, glycols, methanol and fertilizers. — SG
