What is 3D printing?
3D printing is an additive technology used to manufacture parts. It is ‘additive’ in that it doesn’t require a block of material or a mold to manufacture physical objects, it simply stacks and fuses layers of material. It’s typically fast, with low fixed setup costs, and can create more complex geometries than ‘traditional’ technologies, with an ever-expanding list of materials. It is used extensively in the engineering industry, particularly for prototyping and creating lightweight geometries.
3D printing and additive manufacturing
‘3D printing’ is commonly associated with maker culture, hobbyists and amateurs, desktop printers, accessible printing technologies like FDM and low-cost materials such as ABS and PLA (we’ll explain all those acronyms below). This is largely attributable to the democratization of 3D printing through affordable desktop machines that sprung from the movement, like the original MakerBot and Ultimaker, which also led to the explosion of 3D printing in 2009
What are the benefits of 3D printing?
3D printing is an exceptional tool for custom parts and rapid prototyping with a unique set of advantages but also lags behind traditional manufacturing in some ways. The key benefits and limitations can be summarized as follows
Benefits
- Very low start-up costs
- Very quick turnaround
- Large range of available materials
- Design freedom at no extra cost
- Each and every part can easily be customized
Limitations
- Less cost-competitive at higher volumes
- Limited accuracy & tolerances
- Lower strength & anisotropic material properties
- Requires post-processing & support removal
How to get something 3D printed
3D printing has come a long way since its inception and it’s now very easy to get something 3D printed quickly
Buy a printer or use a 3D printing service?
3D printing has come a long way since its inception and it’s now very easy to get something 3D printed very fast for pretty cheap
What Materials can be used in 3D Printing?
There are a variety of 3D printing materials, including thermoplastics such as acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS), metals (including powders), resins and ceramics
3D Printing Technologies
There are three broad types of 3D printing technology;
sintering,
melting, and
stereolithography.
Sintering is a technology where the material is heated, but not to the point of melting, to create high resolution items. Metal powder is used for direct metal laser sintering while thermoplastic powders are used for selective laser sintering.
Melting methods of 3D printing include powder bed fusion, electron beam melting and direct energy deposition, these use lasers, electric arcs or electron beams to print objects by melting the materials together at high temperatures.
Stereolithography utilises photopolymerization to create parts. This technology uses the correct light source to interact with the material in a selective manner to cure and solidify a cross section of the object in thin layers.
How Long Does 3D Printing Take?
The printing time depends on a number of factors, including the size of the part and the settings used for printing. The quality of the finished part is also important when determining printing time as higher quality items take longer to produce. 3D printing can take anything from a few minutes to several hours or days - speed, resolution and the volume of material are all important factors here
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