The Most Important 3D Printing Technologies & Materials You Need to Know


If you believe that all 3D printers use filaments, and terms like Stereolithography, Laser Sintering and PolyJet Printing cause you headaches, then this blog post is for you. In this post, we’ll give you an overview of the essential 3D printing technologies and 3D printing materials that are currently used on an industrial level.

Filament-based 3D Printing
Home printers typically work with plastic filament. The technology behind this is often referred to as “Fused Filament Fabrication” (FFF). In our 3D printing factory, we have more professional, industrial-grade machines: our filament printers use a technology called “Fused Deposition Modeling” (FDM) .
In an FDM printer, a long plastic filament is fed by a spool to a nozzle where the material is liquefied and ‘drawn’ on the platform, where it immediately hardens again. The nozzle moves to place the material in the correct location to build your model up layer by layer. When a layer is drawn, the platform lowers by one layer thickness so the printer can start with the next layer. Sounds similar to a regular home printer? Read on!

Now here’s the cool part: Unlike most home printers, our FDM machine actually uses a second filament that is used for building support material. Since the material used to build the model cannot be deposited in the air (e.g. for overhanging parts), the support material prevents it from falling down. After the printing process, the model is put into a bath with special soap. The support material dissolves automatically in this bath. Thanks to this, your designs can be really complex and contain interlocking, interlinking, and movable parts.
A good example of the kind of piece you can make using this technology is the fully functional, continuously adjustable screw-wrench below – all printed in one piece.

ABS prints: Functional & strong but with a rough surface.

The printing material these printers use is called ABS . This material will give you a print that is strong and accurate. ABS is very useful for functional applications because it matches 80% of the properties of real injected production material. However, the surface quality of the models produced with this material is rougher compared with other materials.

Powder-based 3D Printing
The next big family of printers that we have is not based on filament but on powder. Laser Sintering is used to create 3D prints in Polyamide , Alumide , and Polypropylene .

3D prints in Polyamide come in many different finishes and colors.

The interior of the printer is heated up to just below the melting point of the powder of your choice. The printer then spreads out an incredibly fine layer of this powder. A laser beam heats up the areas that need to be sintered together just above the melting point. And voila: the parts that were touched by the laser are now fused together while the rest...

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