Expanding the nTop ecosystem with CADS Additive

Our latest integration with nTop and AM-Studio from CADS Additive gives engineers who design for metal AM the ability to consider advanced design, material property and laser toolpath.

nTop partner ecosystem

Over the past year we have been working with our partners to ensure seamless connectivity between our computational modeling platform and partner software; be it print prep, CAE, CAD, CAM, etc. This allows us to integrate into our users’ current software and hardware stack which means smooth workflows and, more importantly, gives engineers greater design freedom. Towards the end of 2019, we announced integrations with both EOS and Renishaw. These types of integrations are important to us because we believe the elimination of error-prone workflows, such as those related to the dreaded STL, will lead our users to faster, better innovation.

Looking forward

We are continuously growing our partner base with an agnostic philosophy to create an open ecosystem for all users. That said, I’m happy to announce that users of the standalone product AM-Studio, from CADS Additive, now have direct connectivity from nTop to AM-Studio via slice format. This allows for nTop designs to go directly into the print prep software for the use of its proprietary slicing and hatching capabilities - which, if I might add, is very cool and unparalleled.

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Why is this meaningful? 

Since the beginning of metal-AM technology, its users have been tailoring material properties to applications on a microscale by tuning their laser parameters. Our nTop customers are engineering, some might call it tailoring, parts at the micro, meso and macro level. What this means is that not only can they account for material properties and geometrical shape/design, etc. they can also (with this integration), account for and design with the laser toolpath in mind. This integration is the pinnacle of metal-DfAM by combining the optimized geometry with the best performing laser strategies. 

We’ve received incredibly positive user feedback for the hatching strategies CADS Additive developed and are eager and excited to provide a workflow from nTop to the .SLM-toolpath file via AM-Studio.

Henner Schöneborn, CEO of Corporate Development for CADS Additive, says this of the integration, “Since 25 years+ I´m in business with AM technologies and it was always my aim to optimize the CAD-to-Part route to success. All the action I took, when I was responsible for these kinds of strategies within an AM-Metal-System OEM and today with CADS, were addressed to realize these needs.

With the features of nTop and our AM-Studio we are now able to support the AM-Industry with a boost of functions to ensure the next step in Efficiency (efficient and user-friendly part optimisation), Productivity (min. material use and dedicated part positioning) and Reliability (secured, process driven part support design and tool path optimization).”

If you’d like to learn more about our partnership program please contact us today.