After the successful cooperation with WorldSkills 2024 in Lyon, France, INTAMSYS is once again the exclusive FFF 3D printing sponsor of the 48th WorldSkills Competition in Shanghai in 2026.
In the recently concluded 48th WorldSkills Competition China National Team's Centralized Assessment and Mock Competition, INTAMSYS provided equipment deployment, material guarantee and full-cycle expert technical support for the four core competitions of 05 CAD Mechanical Design, 57 Additive Manufacturing, 59 Industrial Design Technology and 64 Unmanned Aircraft System.
After the mock competition, the Executive Board of the 48th Shanghai WorldSkills Competition sent a letter of thanks to INTAMSYS, expressing its gratitude to INTAMSYS for its support in the organization of the event, technical support, service support, security and stability, and publicity and promotion, and pointing out that INTAMSYS provided strong support for the smooth and orderly conduct of the mock competition.
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Why the WorldSkills Organization chose INTAMSYS
Every time after the cooperation is announced, the industry and the outside will pay attention to this question. The core answer is that the WorldSkills Organization examines not only "3D printing capability" but "industrial-level production capability", and that the WorldSkills Competition is the highest-level world vocational skills event. Its competitive level represents the world's advanced level of vocational skills development in various fields. For additive manufacturing, industrial design, mechanical design, unmanned aircraft systems and other competitions, 3D printing is not a simple modeling tool, but an important technical link connecting digital design, engineering verification, functional manufacturing and real industrial applications.
Therefore, the choice of equipment for the competition is not only based on "whether it can be printed", but also on whether the equipment can run continuously and stably under the high-intensity competition environment, whether it can guarantee the consistency of the printing results of different competitors, different tasks, and different batches, and whether it can support the engineering application requirements close to the real industrial scenarios. This is fundamentally different from consumer-grade 3D printing, which is the core value of industrial-grade FFF 3D printing.
What is the difference between industrial-grade FFF and consumer-grade FFF?
Many people would think that the difference between industrial-grade 3D printers and consumer-grade 3D printers is only higher price, larger size and higher temperature.
In fact, these are only intuitive differences in hardware parameters, the real core difference between the two is that the user groups, application scenarios and core requirements are completely different, there is no superiority or inferiority, but each plays an irreplaceable value in different areas.
Consumer-grade FFF in addition to household DIY, basic education and popularization of science, has now been widely landed in commercial production: a large number of handmade cultural and creative manufacturers rely on consumer-grade equipment to complete the mass production of batch products, and various types of science and technology enterprises are also using consumer models to carry out the appearance of prototypes, the structure of the appearance of parts of the rapid research and development of the validation of the cost-effective and easy-to-use advantages, support the cultural and creative, small batch appearance of the parts of a huge commercial market, greatly reducing the technical threshold, allowing 3D printing to enter thousands of households and the mass market. Industrial-grade FFF focuses on harsh working conditions, focusing on high-performance materials, mass production of functional parts, high-end tooling, medical and aerospace parts and other scenarios, aiming at full-process engineering compliance and batch stability requirements.
To briefly summarize the core mission of the two types of equipment:
- Consumer-grade equipment: taking into account personal creation and small- and medium-volume commercialization, efficiently landing appearance molding, mass production of cultural creation, product appearance prototype verification;
- Industrial-grade equipment: focusing on engineering, realizing long-term stability, continuous, repeatable and traceable manufacturing of functional parts that meet engineering requirements.
| Comparison Dimension | Consumer FFF | Industrial FFF |
|---|---|---|
| Core Positioning | Individual creation, teaching demonstration, R&D prototype appearance verification, medium and small batch cultural and creative mass production, etc. | Industrial R&D, engineering verification, manufacturing |
| Application Scenario | Hand-me-downs, toys, decorations, teaching models, R&D prototypes | Tooling, jigs, fixtures, functional parts, end parts, spare parts. |
| Material Compatibility | Mainly supports basic materials such as PLA, PETG, common ABS, etc. | Fully supports high-performance engineering plastics such as PEEK, PEKK, PEI (ULTEM), PPSU, etc. |
| Temperature capability | Nozzle temperature usually ≤ 300 ℃, open or semi-open structure, no thermostatic chamber | High temperature printheads (up to 500°C), fully enclosed thermostatic chambers (up to 300°C), high temperature platforms |
| Usage Requirements | Focus on appearance, print speed and ease of use | Meet industry standards for mechanical properties, dimensional accuracy, consistency, traceability, etc. |
| Repeatability | The consistency of the results of multiple batches may be greatly affected by equipment, materials and environment, but to meet the consistency requirements for mass production of handcrafted and appearance parts. | Emphasize the consistency of the same part at different times, in different batches and under different task conditions. |
| Reliability and continuous production | Designed for intermittent use and on-demand manual labor. | 7×24 hours of unattended continuous operation, low print failure, rework and downtime, adapted to the needs of production line level. |
| Traceability | Complete material, parameter and process records are often lacking | Records materials, equipment, process parameters, print jobs, and quality data to close the quality loop |
| Core Value | Lowering the barrier to 3D printing, exposing more people to 3D printing, and empowering creative arts and front-end product development. | Enabling 3D printing to truly enter the R&D, prototyping, production and high-end manufacturing processes. |
Therefore, the core of industrial-grade FFF is not just equipment parameters, but a set of system capabilities built around industrial manufacturing.
1. Repeatability
Industrial 3D printing requires the same part to be stable and consistent over time, across batches, and under different mission conditions.
In an event environment such as the WorldSkills Competition, equipment repeatability is directly related to the fairness of the competition. If the state of the equipment fluctuates too much, the print results may be influenced by the equipment rather than the true skill of the competitor.
Therefore, what is needed for the event is "consistently stable printing".
2. Reliability
Tournament site is often a concentrated task, time constraints, multiple competitions in parallel and other characteristics. The equipment must not only be able to print, but also be able to maintain stability in an environment of continuous operation, high load usage, and rapid on-site response.
Industrial-grade FFF equipment needs to minimize the impact of print failures, rework, and downtime to provide a reliable technical environment for event organization and player performance.
3. Engineered Materials Capabilities
Industrial FFF is geared toward more complex material systems that support high-performance engineering plastics and composites such as PEEK, PEKK, PEI, PPSU, PC, PA-CF, and others.
These materials usually have higher temperature resistance, strength, rigidity, chemical resistance, flame retardancy or lightweight value, and can serve real industrial scenarios such as aerospace, automotive, medical, energy, semiconductor, robotics and so on.
Material capability determines the application boundary. Basic materials are more to meet the display and modeling needs, while high-performance engineering materials determine whether 3D printing can enter the functional parts manufacturing and production-level applications.
4. Process control
When materials are upgraded from basic materials such as PLA and PETG to engineering materials such as PC, PEI and PEEK, the difficulty of printing will be significantly increased.
High-performance materials are prone to shrinkage stresses during the cooling process, which can lead to warping, cracking, insufficient interlayer bonding, and dimensional deviations. Industrial-grade FFF must control the temperature field, shrinkage behavior, and interlayer bonding quality during the printing process through high-temperature printheads, high-temperature stages, fully-enclosed constant-temperature chambers, material-drying management, stabilized motion control, and proven process parameters.
This is not simply a matter of "enclosing the chamber", but is a systematic project that consists of equipment, materials, software, and process.
5. Consistency of results
Industrial-grade printing must focus on complete engineering metrics. For example:
- Whether the part is dimensionally stable;
- Whether interlayer bonding is reliable;
- Whether mechanical properties meet application requirements;
- Whether print results are consistent across multiple devices and batches;
- Whether material, equipment, parameter and job data are recordable, reproducible and traceable.
For real industrial applications, printing is only the first step. Whether the printed part can be verified, assembled and used is the key.
6. Traceability
In industrial manufacturing, a part needs to be clearly documented from material to equipment, from process parameters to printing process.
Especially in high-end manufacturing, vocational skills training and event standardization environments, traceability is not only related to quality management, but also to result review and process optimization.
This is an important reason why INTAMSYS continues to build its ability to integrate equipment, materials, software, processes and services.
Bringing Industrial Grade Standards to the WorldSkills Stage
The WorldSkills Organization chose industrial-grade FFF 3D printing essentially because the content of the event is getting closer and closer to the real industrial environment.
Competitors need to master not only the operation of equipment, but also the complete ability from design understanding, material selection, process setup, print manufacturing to result verification. Such ability cultivation must be built on a stable, reliable, repeatable and traceable industrial-grade technology platform.
Joining hands with the WorldSkills Competition for two consecutive years is a recognition of INTAMSYS's industrial-grade FFF technology capability, event guarantee capability and global service capability.
In the future, INTAMSYS will continue to connect vocational skills education and advanced manufacturing industry with industrial-grade 3D printing technology, bring the standards, processes and application experience of the industrial frontline to the world skills stage, and help more young skilled talents master the core competencies for future-oriented manufacturing.
Industrial 3D printing is not just about printing out parts.
It is more about making every manufacturing, stable, reliable and verifiable.
