Caracol pushes its large format additive manufacturing robotic platform Heron AM into a new era for industrial production

For this year’s edition, the company wants to put a spotlight on the whole large format 3D printing value chain – from materials, to hardware, software, and applications – with the aim of fostering awareness and demonstrating what benefits these innovative advanced technologies can deliver to manufacturing supply chains.

Caracol’s patented robotic platform Heron AM is center stage at the company’s booth where 3 product launches will be presented, including: hardware, software and automation.

Starting with the company’s latest hardware launch: the High Versatility (HV) extruder. This product completes Caracol’s portfolio of 3D printing heads, providing a tool that is designed to answer customers’ need for an extremely flexible system. It is the ideal solution to deliver precision, performance on advanced materials, as well as speed. The new end-effector was designed to perfect the manufacturing of a broad range of applications with a single tool: from finished parts, such as marine super structures, architectural panels or furniture parts, as well as small to mid-sized tools, jigs, and fixtures. Caracol’s range of extruders provides the ideal technological solution to cover all manufacturing needs and applications clients might have printing large scale parts. Each of them 2 processes a wide variety of thermoplastic pellets, from composite fibre-reinforced to recycled or biobased materials. The High Versatility extruder joins Caracol’s extruder range, together with the lightweight and compact High Accuracy (HA) model and the high-throughput and robust High Flow (HF).

To provide clients with full control, flexibility, quality control, and repeatability of the manufacturing process Caracol is launching its expanded Eidos Manufacturing Software Suite, that covers a wide range of features. Beyond its Parameters & Path Planning software and its HMI – Human Machine Interface to activate and directly control the platform, the company is launching Eidos – IoT. This new module introduces remote smart monitoring for customers to manage their full fleet of machines in a simpler and quicker way. It includes features such as condition monitoring, process monitoring, digital twin, predictive maintenance, cloud data logging and analysis of numerous variables concerning the system, the printed part, and the working environment. Its integration with Caracol’s hardware Heron AM truly guarantees a turnkey system that is efficient and controls the full production cycle, to deliver production continuity and reliability.

The Heron AM platform is designed as a modular system that can be configured and customized to satisfy client’s needs; this is why Caracol is launching a new control cabinet that can manage multiple end-effectors on a single system. Developed to manage the HV and HF extruders, this innovation provides a unique and centralized control unit and a plug-and-play logic, to enhance all key elements’ integration. With this solution, clients can enhance their manufacturing flexibility and maximize their investment on a single platform, adapting it to changing needs and applications.