Engineering the Future: A Norwegian Startup’s Strategic Investment in Industrial 3D Printing

Why In-House Printing

For Asgård, 3D printing was never a question of outsourcing. From the outset, three strategic considerations pointed toward building in-house printing capability:

• Project confidentiality. For some confidential projects, the supply chain must stay short and controlled. Outsourcing printed parts to external service providers introduces security and IP risks that are unacceptable. Printing in-house keeps everything within the trust perimeter.

• Building field-support expertise. Asgård does not only design parts — the company intends to support customers in printing spare parts in the field. Effective field support requires hands-on experience with the printing process. That knowledge can only be built by printing the parts in-house.

• Lead time and design iteration. In nearly every project Asgård has handled, an in-house printer has provided the flexibility to test a prototype, adapt the design, and reprint — often within the same day. This iteration speed is a direct competitive advantage when serving clients who need rapid engineering responses.

The value of this approach was proven early: when a chocolate bouquet client needed 400 praline support clips on short notice, Asgård produced the full batch in-house and delivered on time.

The Consumer-Grade Ceiling

Asgård started with a consumer-grade, open-frame FFF printer — reliable for basic PLA, but its open design lost heat in all directions, making engineering materials like PETG difficult to print. In practice it was limited to PLA; PEEK, ABS, flame-retardant and carbon-fiber grades were out of reach — a fundamental gap for a military vehicle project demanding thermally and mechanically robust parts.

The Reliability Question

The decision to move to an industrial platform was reinforced by an experience at one of Asgård’s clients — five printers from a leading global consumer-grade FDM brand ran flawlessly for six months, then began failing. For Jörg, the lesson was clear: when the vehicle program moves into prototyping, the printer must stay dependable for years, because downtime on a time-critical project is unacceptable.

Asgård’s purchase of the 310 APOLLO was therefore a strategic investment — building reliable, industrial-grade production infrastructure before the urgent need arrives.

“My purchase was strategically to have a reliable printer for the standard materials I print today, and for the functional materials I expect to print in the near future for vehicle projects. When my actual vehicle project gets into the prototyping stage, I want to be prepared to print parts in PEEK and ABS.”

Jörg Ziemann · Founder, Asgård Engineering AS

Selection Criteria and Evaluation

FUNMAT PRO 310 APOLLO at Asgård Engineering’s workshop

Asgård evaluated multiple industrial printer suppliers against clear criteria: reliability, capability for functional materials, service, spare part availability, and technical support. INTAMSYS ranked first across all of them.

The Full Package

INTAMSYS proved its value at every stage of the engagement:

• Pre-delivery guidance: Detailed instructions on preparing the site before the printer arrived

• Packaging and delivery: Fast delivery in packaging that protected the precision equipment

• Startup training: Hands-on training in setup and maintenance

• Direct technical access: A direct line to INTAMSYS technical resources — not a call center, but real engineers

Capability for Functional Materials

The FUNMAT PRO 310 APOLLO’s real advantage lies in its ability to print functional plastics and thermoplastics (reinforced or not with fibers). Polymers which provide specific function or performance beyond basic structural use like flame retardancy, electrical conductivity, heat resistance, chemical resistance, etc. These are materials that no consumer-grade machine can handle —and they are exactly what Asgård’s upcoming vehicle program requires.

Product Quality

Beyond specifications, Jörg was impressed by the machine’s build quality. In his words, it is “a whole new level of product quality. It is built to last… and that is what we need.”

“The Vikings of Asgård needed a “brotherhood in purpose” — a partner for professional-level 3D prints with service, spare part distribution, and support whenever our clan needs it. Comparing several competitors, INTAMSYS was rapidly the number one choice. And they proved worthy.”

Jörg Ziemann · Founder, Asgård Engineering AS

The FUNMAT PRO 310 APOLLO is a desktop-scale, high-speed industrial FDM 3D printer purpose-built for PEEK, PEKK and the full PAEK family. It combines production-grade high-temperature hardware with the speed, reliability and traceability of serial manufacturing — enabling users to move from PEEK prototyping to PAEK end-use part production on a single platform in a 700 × 655 × 750 mm footprint.

Key Specifications

High-Performance Material Printing

The 310 APOLLO supports the full PAEK family with up to 2× higher Z-axis strength compared with other PEEK 3D printers, delivering reliable mechanical performance for load-bearing, high-temperature applications.

Why the FUNMAT PRO 310 APOLLO prints PEEK exceptionally well: PEEK is among the hardest Fused Filament Fabrication materials to print as its rapid crystallization during layer deposition weakens interlayer bonding, creates uneven crystallinity and causes warping. The 310 APOLLO 3D printer solves these at the root cause through system-level thermal management — coordinating chamber, platform and nozzle temperatures with a dynamic thermal-field regulation to control crystallization throughout the print. The result: true molecular-level layer fusion, consistent part properties, and speed and strength achieved together.

Continuous Production

The 310 APOLLO is built for continuous manufacturing: paired with a 3 kg active-drying filament box (sealed, reusable molecular sieve, 65 °C heating, real-time temperature/humidity monitoring), it enables week-long unattended printing — supported by filament auto-loading, run-out detection and power-loss recovery.

INTAMQuality™ — Intelligent Quality Tracking

INTAMQuality™ continuously records print-process data for every job, delivering full traceability and batch-consistent quality — the production-level assurance required by aerospace, medical and defense applications.

Prototyping and Small-Batch Production

The FUNMAT PRO 310 APOLLO serves a dual role at Asgård: prototyping during product development and small-batch serial production (typically 2–50 pieces per project).

Military Vehicle Components

Industry: Defense · Stage: Development → Prototyping → Serial

Asgård is designing a complete 10-ton class military vehicle, and several components are candidates for 3D printing:

High voltage distribution base structure — requires material with defined electrical insulation properties and high heat resistance

Air intake and distribution system — heat and UV resistant, flame retardant

Seals for hatches — flexible, compressible material

Instrumentation panels — chemical resistance, high temperature resistance, visually attractive, flame retardant

These parts are currently printed in PETG for form and fit validation. When the program enters prototyping, they will be reprinted in PEEK and ABS on the 310 APOLLO 3D printer — materials that deliver the thermal, mechanical, and safety properties required for actual vehicle deployment.

LFP Battery Covers

Industry: Energy Storage · Stage: Design & Testing

Asgård designs LFP (Lithium Iron Phosphate) batteries for mobile and stationary systems. The battery cell cover is 3D printed and serves a dual purpose: protecting the cell connectors and supporting components such as the BMS (Battery Management System), main fuses, temperature sensors, and bus bars. Battery voltages range from 12V to 48V.

These components are mainly flat with varying material density per layer, which makes warping a key challenge — one that requires a printer with a controlled chamber temperature, a high-temperature nozzle, and stable production quality. The 310 APOLLO’s 100 °C heated chamber is specifically designed to address this.

Praline Support Clips

Industry: Consumer Products · Stage: Small-Batch Production Completed

Asgård designed a range of clip supports for a chocolate bouquet company, where pralines are manually pressed into a holder to create a bouquet without damaging the foil or the chocolate. The design required a slightly flexible, temperature-resistant material — and, most importantly, a geometry carefully engineered to ensure proper handling without damaging the pralines.

Asgård produced the first 400 pieces in-house. The clips were initially printed in PLA for prototyping, then transitioned to PETG for serial production.

Norwegian Red Cross Tactical Training Models

Industry: NGO / Training · Stage: Completed

For the Norwegian Red Cross, Asgård designed and printed small figurines of vehicles and personnel for tactical training. Using the 310 APOLLO’s IDEX dual-extruder system in mirror mode — printing identical items on both print heads simultaneously — made production significantly faster than a single-head machine.

Additionally, Asgård printed wall mounts for flashlights and headlamps for the Red Cross. These were initially produced in PLA and will be replaced by PETG versions for improved durability. Further orders will be printed in red PETG in small batches.

Reliability, Speed and Strategic Readiness

Reliability as a Strategic Asset

The 310 APOLLO 3D printer’s core value is reliability. Having seen consumer-grade printers fail within six months at a client's site, Jörg deliberately invested in a machine built to last. When the vehicle program enters prototyping, the printer will be ready and dependable.

“When I have to print, it shall simply work. The idea is to have a printer that is extremely reliable, even after one, two, or three years.”

Jörg Ziemann · Founder, Asgård Engineering AS

Faster Design Iteration

While cost savings are not Asgård's primary driver at this stage, the speed advantage is tangible: the 310 APOLLO prints faster than the previous consumer machine, and design iterations now happen in hours, not days, a CAD-to-printed-part turnaround within the same workday.

Better Material Results

Even with standard materials, the FUNMAT PRO 310 APOLLO's controlled heated chamber delivers significantly better results than the open-frame machine, warping, stringing, and thermal inconsistency are dramatically reduced.

Future Capability On-Demand

When the vehicle program moves into prototyping in late 2026, the 310 APOLLO 3D printer will print functional parts in PEEK and ABS immediately — no procurement lead time, no outsourcing risk, no learning curve under deadline pressure.

PEEK, ABS and the Road to Serial Production

Asgård Engineering’s 3D printing journey is still in its early chapters, but the foundation is solid. Over the coming months, Jörg plans to:

• Begin PEEK and ABS printing for the military vehicle program

• Expand into small serial production of vehicle components (20–100 vehicles/year), with the client eventually taking over printing after 1–2 years

• Test more advanced materials on the 310 APOLLO to build the expertise required for field support

• Explore printing services for partner companies in the surrounding area, generating return on investment beyond internal use

For Asgård, the 310 APOLLO is an engineering enabler, it supports Asgård’s core business of 3D design and engineering, providing the flexibility to prototype, iterate, and produce small batches on demand.

“A printer such as the INTAMSYS 310 APOLLO can be interesting for small businesses like mine as you can see. My focus is 3D design and engineering work. The printer supports me with that and creates the possibility for prototyping and really small serial production within the next winter and spring.”

Jörg Ziemann · Founder, Asgård Engineering AS