Application of the Week: Inverter Tunnel

Welcome to the first in a series of articles spotlighting real-world 3D printed applications that solve practical challenges across industries.

Each article will showcase a specific component or part designed in-house at UltiMaker and used by our customers, highlighting the design process, material choices, and the key benefits over a traditionally manufactured counterpart.

In this article, we’re looking at a 3D printed inverter tunnel designed for ice cream packaging lines. Let’s dive into how this part was created and why 3D printing was an optimal solution.

Turning packaging on its head

Designed by our Senior Technical Sales Engineer, Jeremy Evers, the role of an inverter tunnel is to precisely reorient a package on the production line without manual intervention. In this case, the application is aimed at flipping ice cream packages 180 degrees, orienting them bottom-side-up for expiry date printing.

Resources saved

With 3D printing, inverter tunnels can be quickly prototyped and refined to meet specific packaging format needs and created in a matter of hours, vastly reducing lead times with little to no wasted material.

This inverter tunnel for example costs ~99% less than a POM manufactured equivalent (which costs ~1980€) and takes around 16 hours to print (95% improved lead time over the 13.5 days for the POM equivalent).

Material options

Traditionally sourced inverter tunnels are typically created by milling large blocks of POM and stacking them, a process which wastes a lot of material, has a lengthy manufacturing time and uses up a lot of storage space for the base material.

When it comes to materials, there are several options depending on the use case, when it comes to food-safe abrasion resistant materials the Igus Iglidur i150, LEHVOSS Luvocom 3F PAHT 50588 BL/L or 9936 BK are all great choices and work great on all UltiMaker S-series and Factor printers.

If you find this application as useful and interesting as we do, why not get in touch with us to see if we can help you leverage the advantages of 3D printing for your business.