Outreach News

Gerard Albujer, from the Prototyping Service at ICMAB, participated in the Formnext Fair

Formnext is the largest additive manufacturing fair in the world, held in Frankfurt am Main. The event covers everything from the largest and most advanced sector to the most domestic one.

Formnext is a central information platform for industrial 3D Printing experts and production professionals that work with a wide range of applications | Gerard Albujer

As a hub for Additive Manufacturing, Formnext is a central information platform for industrial 3D Printing experts and production professionals that work with a wide range of applications, from the smallest things that can be made to industry-sized items. ICMAB Prototyping Laboratory member Gerard Albujer attended this fair on the 18th and 19th of November 2025.

Prusa, E3D and BondTech

Of utmost interest for ICMAB, there were three companies: Prusa, E3D and BondTech.

Prusa is the most seasoned manufacturer of desktop 3D printers on the market. They are based in Prague and are very committed to open-source, customer protection, and support, as well as open to collaboration with other companies. They are suppliers for ICMAB. At this fair, they presented their new products.

New INDX system on the Prusa CoreOne | Gerard Albujer

E3D is also a long-standing English company that primarily manufactures hotends, the most crucial component of a printer, which melt and deposit the material. For more than a decade, they have been innovating the extrusion system and manufacturing Prusa’s hotends.

On the other hand, BondTech is a Swedish company that designs and manufactures extruders, the mechanism that controls the movement of the material. They are well-known in the open-source printer community due to their ease of integration and the good results their products deliver. Early this year, they introduced the INDX, a very innovative system that allows printing with several materials simultaneously, and which stands out for its extremely fast thermal response, spatial efficiency, low scaling cost, and very low material waste.

Of this experience, Gerard saId: "Last week I visited Formnext - Where ideas take shape, the largest Additive Manufacturing event in the world. There I had the chance to meet the Prusa Research, E3D and Bondtech. From E3D's new invulnerable ObXidian 500 coating for nozzles, a new hotend that allows a Prusa budget printer to print in engineering plastics, new toolheads that transform our XL into a multitechnology manufacturing platform all the way to an integration that transforms a modest printer to the most versatile and efficient in the market, ICMAB's 3D printing department has a very promising future."

Outreach News

Gerard Albujer, from the Prototyping Service at ICMAB, participated in the Formnext Fair

Prusa, E3D and BondTech

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