Among its benefits, 3D printing lets designers quickly create models and prototypes, reducing product development time and costs. An imprimante 3d nantes also allows manufacturers to produce products on demand, reducing inventory management and warehouse space needs.
Artists can use the technology to fabricate sculptures and other art. And the military and medical fields use it to print surgical tools, prosthetics, and body parts.
What is 3D printing?
3D printing is a fabrication technique that makes three-dimensional objects from a digital model or file. The printed components can be used instead of traditional manufactured parts to create prototypes and final-use products. This reduces costs and lead times. Designers can also incorporate features that are difficult or impossible to produce with conventional manufacturing methods.
These innovations offer designers new possibilities in the design and manufacturing of products. They allow designers to create complex shapes that can then be consolidated into smaller parts to reduce assembly times, improve weight, strength and functionality. 3D printers can be used for a variety applications, including the production of surgical guides and custom-fitted implants.
While 3D printing is still relatively new, several companies have already entered the market with printers ranging in price from a few thousand dollars to tens of thousands of dollars. As materials science and technology has improved, and patents have expired and opened up the market for this type of printing, the cost of these machines have come down.
The most common types of 3D printers are those that use fused filament fabrication (FFF), a process in which thermoplastic materials such as acrylonitrile butadiene styrene or polylactic acid are extruded through a heated nozzle and deposited layer by layer onto a build platform. This technique can be used at home or on workbenches, in design studios and recreation rooms.
Other types of 3D printing technologies include sintering, melting and stereolithography. Sintering techniques such as laser cured material or powder bed fusion fuse small particles of thermoplastics and metals at high temperatures using heat, electric arcs, or electron beams. Melting processes like direct energy deposition, sintering and powder bed fusion also use the same technologies to produce parts by melting the material and depositing it layer by layer on a build platform. Stereolithography uses photopolymerization to cure and solidify cross sections of a part in thin layers.
These technologies can now produce parts with an exceptional level of dimensional accuracy and finish. This opens up new opportunities in the aerospace industry, where parts need to be strong, lightweight and heat resistant. NASA, SpaceX, and Blue Origin have used 3D printers to create tools, models and prototypes, and even rocket components. In one case, the five legs of SLIM’s lunar landing vehicle were made from an aluminum alloy, which was lightweight and strong. This allowed the structure to roll over and collapse on impact, instead of breaking apart and sending it crashing to earth.
Types of 3D printing
Generally associated with the DIY culture of hobbyists and amateurs, 3D printing is also increasingly incorporated into production manufacturing. Additive manufacturing is not only useful for prototypes but can also be an alternative to injection molding when it comes to limited-run parts with specific performance requirements.
The 3D-printing industry is rapidly advancing. In less than a decade, 3D printers have become a vital tool for rapid prototyping. This is partly because of the significant improvements that have been achieved in the technology since it was introduced.
Fused deposition models (FDMs) are the most common printers for industrial and consumer applications. These printers extrude thermoplastic filaments such as ABS (Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene) or PLA (Polylactic Acid) through a heated nozzle and apply them layer by layer onto a build platform. These printed layers are then glued together to form the final part.
Stereolithography apparatuses (SLA) use UV light to cure photopolymers, creating a solid structure layer by layer. SLA is ideal for high-detail, intricate models that require smooth surfaces with tight tolerances. This includes patterns and molds. It’s also commonly used in dental and jewelry applications, engineering and product design, and education.
Selective laser sintering uses a high power laser to sinter tiny particles of polymer into a solid structure. This eliminates the need for support structures, and results in parts that are very strong with mechanical properties similar to injection-molded components. SLS is widely used by engineers for functional prototyping, allowing them to fully test their designs with functionally accurate components that look and feel like the final product.
Metal 3D Printing is a relatively young technology. Several companies have developed different methods to achieve this, including powder-bed fusion welding (PBW), direct metal laser sintering (DMLS), and electron beam melting (EBML). Currently, only the EBM 3D printer, which is used extensively by the aerospace sector, is commercially available and can print metal objects.
Materials
The material you choose is crucial to the success of 3D printing. The material you use is critical to the success of your 3D printed part.
Polylactic acid (PLA) is a popular choice for many printers, as it is made from natural products like sugar cane and corn starch and is biodegradable. It has a high strength-toweight ratio and is available in both soft and hard formulations. It is an excellent choice for prototypes as well as medical and household applications.
ABS (acrylonitrile butadiene styrene) is another popular filament, and it provides a high level of mechanical properties for end-use parts. It can withstand higher levels of heat and can be easily sanded or painted, making it a popular choice for prototyping and tooling. Nylon is a plastic with a high strength to weight ratio and anticorrosion properties.
The field of 3D printing materials is continually advancing, and new high-performance polymers are becoming available. Polyetherimide (PEI), for example, offers a combination of heat and chemical resistance with excellent strength properties that make it suitable for aerospace and automotive applications. It is food-safe and transparent. This makes it a popular material for medical devices, and other parts which need to be both functional as well as visually appealing.
Direct metal laser sintering is a process that uses a laser beam to melt and fuse small particles of aluminum or titanium to create a solid component. This is a good option for parts which need to be lightweight but strong. It can also reduce the size and lead time for production.
Composites are also a popular choice for 3D printing, with reinforcing materials adding structural strengths to otherwise weaker plastic materials. Carbon fiber is most common and can be combined with other polymers to achieve desired performance characteristics.
Create a 3D model
Before an object is printed, it has to be created as a digital design. This can be done with 3D scanners or computer-aided design software. The design will then be saved as a printable version, usually with the.STL or.OBJ extensions. Once the model is ready to print, it must be prepared for printing by slicing it into hundreds or thousands of thin layers with slicing software.
The ability of 3D printers to quickly and inexpensively convert CAD models into physical components has opened up a whole new world of possibilities in industrial product development, prototypes, and full-scale production. Many companies now use 3D printing to create everything from one-off concept models and functional prototypes to full-scale products for testing and customer feedback. Airbus, for example, used a 3D-printer to produce 500 high precision drilling caps for its aircraft production trials, reducing the production time from weeks down to three days.
To achieve the desired finish, a model may undergo post-processing like painting or sanding. This is particularly important for parts used in the medical industry, where an incorrect size or misalignment could cause complications during surgery. 3D printing is also helping doctors to practice surgical procedures on synthetic cadavers before moving onto real patients, and it’s being explored as a way to create less expensive and more durable prosthetics for people who have lost limbs.
As the technology improves and becomes more affordable, it’s likely that we’ll see further applications for 3D printing in a wide range of fields, from education and entertainment to manufacturing, aerospace, and the military. In the future, we could see homes made of 3D-printed cement, and some companies have already begun exploring ways to create space dwellings for use on Mars or the Moon.
