- The screw plasticizing unit is operated with conventional thermoplastic granulate.

- Compared to filament-based production technologies, this enables the processing of unfilled, but also highly filled plastic compounds with simultaneously high and scalable throughputs. The possible high throughput leads to a considerable cost advantage in the processing of engineering thermoplastics. In addition, depending on the material, the low price of granulate (approx. 1 to 8 €/kg) compared to filament (approx. 20 to 500 €/kg) results in a considerable cost reduction potential.

- The high productivity of the process used is based on the physical principle of shear heating within the screw extruder. In contrast to the pure plastification via heat conduction, a scalable conveying rate independent of the thermal conductivity of the material can be achieved. Depending on the process point, the throughput rate can be increased to several kilograms per hour.

- Like previous manufacturing processes, additive manufacturing plants must also be subject to the usual investment calculations. Accordingly, the plant investment must be reduced and the material output increased at the same time. Only with high ratios of absolute investment and material output per year can an economic production be guaranteed in comparison to injection molding.

- The flexibility of the system is based on the separation of the platform module and the print module.

- Thus, a standardized production module can be combined with different platform modules, or several production modules can be combined with one platform module.

- SpaceA, using high module design with print module and platform module, could match different products and systems for flexible production.

- A 6-axis industrial robot overcomes the usual limitations of component size and design complexity. In order to ensure reproducible dimensional accuracy and high surface quality, and at the same time avoid a restriction of component complexity, subtractive processes are integrated into the manufacturing process by combining additive structure and machining in one manufacturing system.

- Based on this approach, it is also possible to integrate inserts such as threaded or bearing bushes, injection molded parts, electronic or ceramic inserts, and to equip the component to be manufactured with additional functions. For this purpose, the machine used for extrusion and machining operations is equipped with a standardized tool-changing system, which guarantees a high degree of automation and flexibility.