This blog post will help you if you think that 3D printers all use filaments and that terms like Stereolithography as well as Laser Sintering are causing you anxiety. This post will give you an overview of the most significant 3D printing techniques as well as 3D printing materials currently being used at an industrial level.


3D printing using filament

Home printers usually work with plastic filament. Fused Filament Fabrication is the name of the technology. At our free cad software factory We have more sophisticated industrial-grade equipment: our filament 3D printers use the technology known as Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM).


An FDM printer is made up of an extended filament of plastic that is fed from a spool into an nozzle. The material is liquefied on the platform and ‘drawn’ there and it immediately hardens. The nozzle moves to place the material in the correct place to build the model, layer by layer. When a layer is drawn, the platform lowers by one layer’s thickness, so the printer can start with the following layer. It’s like the normal printer you would find at home. Continue reading!


3D printing using powder-based materials

The next large family of commercial 3d printer that we have isn’t built on filament, but rather on powder. Laser Sintering is utilized to create 3D prints in Polyamide, Alumide, and Polypropylene.


The printer’s interior is heated until the point of reaching the melting point of the powder you choose. This powder is then evenly dispersed through the printer. The laser beam then heats the areas that need to be sintered together just above the melting point. And voil&224;: the pieces that were hit by the laser have been fused, and the rest remain as loose powder.


Models are printed layer by layer with the help of this laser beam. A roller spreads a layer of powder over the surface after each layer is printed. The end result of the printing job is a large block of powder that contains the models that have been inked. In order to take your prints out of the powder block, we need to dig into the un-sintered box and scrub away any excess.


Resin-based 3D printing

We are now moving into technology that is used by extremely large 3D laser scanner. Mammoth printers are capable printing up to 2.1m (6.9ft) in length! They don’t use filament nor powder. They make use of liquid resin. Welcome to the world of Stereolithography. The Stereolithography process is carried out in the form of a tank that begins with a layer of liquid polymer that is spread across a platform. The UV-sensitive piqued polymer may be hardened by the use of a UV laser to create one layer that can be used by your 3D printer. The rest of the layer stays liquid. The platform is then lowered and the layer that follows is added directly onto the first one.


When the object is completed, it is lifted out of the tank with the help of the platform that supports it. It’s similar to an underwater vessel rising towards the water’s surface. The liquid left over is then flushed away. The video below illustrates Stereolithography in motion.


What is the difference between Laser Sintering and this? Since liquid materials are used (and not powder), we need to provide support material for hanging parts as well as parts that protrude. Once the model has been taken off the machine, the supports can be manually removed. This means that the design flexibility of this technique is limited. Stereolithography materials have smooth surfaces as well as numerous finishing and post-processing options.