3D Printing, an In Depth Look
Lets Talk Technology
Lets Talk Technology
So to recap our last post…3D printing is not new to the engineering community. Most of us long timers have had some association with it for as long as 40 years…..back when the first (SLA) stereolithography machines emerged as a commercial offering from 3Dsystems. (FDM) fused deposition modeling from Stratasys and (SLS) selective laser sintering both emerged a short time later and the advanced technology teams of giants like GE, Ford, GM, Boeing and others started to adopt the technology into their experiments. At the same time the early adopter service providers began to surface. Actually, we would be remised not to acknowledge that GE played an important role in the creation of this technology. There are volumes that can be written (and have been) about the birth of this industry. You will have to contact us privately for more on that aspect. For the first decade 3d printing or then known as Rapid Prototyping was used primarily for early design verification and advanced research. Mainly because the process was still very slow and the materials were very limited and not at all durable. However after the first years major material companies such as Dupont began to see value and when they joined the development effort the technology really took off. There were even metal 3d printing systems developed….pretty good ones, but just not enough interest for continued commercial development. A lot of private metal development from companies like Ford and GE has been happening for a very long while.
The real shift in 3D printing that has been fueling the more recent interest is the acceptance of Added Manufacturing (3D Printing’s more robust title) as a method for production. As a service supplier we have seen a lot of this recent interest and growth. Though it will be a very long time before 3D Printing can replace tooling based production processes like injection molding and die casting, it has gained ground in many custom applications that are not tooling friendly or very small volumes. Also, much of the concentration in recent years has been focused on generating tooling for production processes from 3D printing. Not a new concept, but one that recent advancements in materials and processing has made more feasible. These advancements are not only delegated to production tooling applications. We have aided our customers in realizing true advantages in 3D printed fixturing for assembly and validation as well. More can be found here: https://www.broadviewproduct.com/manufacturing-support/jigs-and-fixtures
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Process
SLA Stereolithography: Still an industry heavy weight because of its ability to build tight tolerance, watertight(low porosity) structures in a variety of materials. The improvement of materials, lasers, software and process advancement, such as DLP, have elevated its’ value. It still lags as a production process (in our opinion) because of the lack of common/proven production grade materials and the sensitivity to UV aging. Some industries, such as the dental, have well adopted it into production tooling applications i.e. Invisalign™. Some of the advantages of SLA include:
Smooth solid watertight build structures, resulting in good moisture resistance and high level finishing capabilities.
Fine build feature details aiding in tight tolerancing applications
Water clear transparency material options for lighting lens, display and packaging applications
Fast build capabilities, especially multiple part applications or large thin wall parts.
Good parts for pattern making applications because of high level finishing capabilities
FDM Fused Deposition Modeling: Another industry heavyweight because of the ability to build parts in common production grade thermoplastics including popular carbon filled varieties. Advantages:
A wide variety of production grade thermoplastics available for prototype testing and short run production. Including elastomeric like TPU and TPE, and high performance plastics like Ultem and PPSU
A variety of standard colors or even custom colors for larger runs.
Low initial investment for desktop machines…though the quality of parts is much higher in the commercial grade machines like Fortus.
Relatively fast change between material types including the ability to build a part in multiple materials
SLS Selective Laser Sintering: Early adopted and refined, SLS has been the go-to for many years for high performance prototypes and fixtures. The most popular material being glass filled nylon for added rigidity and stability. As great as this sounds it has had limitations as the glass fiber filler is very short and does not add much to the overall structural performance, aside from rigidity and added heat deflection. It actually reduces the performance in many aspects. This process also only offers a matte sandpaper type part finish Advantages of SLS:
High performance family of polyimide based materials
Good stiffness and rigidity
Decent temperature resistance
Very good process for multiple-part builds. Parts can be easily nested in the build envelope
Good durability and temperature performance for longer life parts
Metal printed parts in many material grades, including aluminum, stainless and titanium
MJF Multijet Fusion: similar to SLS in that it starts with a vat of granulated material and uses polyimide as the main offering. This process swaps the laser for a chemical binding solution and uses post annealing to finish the cure. With the support of the Hewlett Packard (HP) corporation this process continues to evolve and is rapidly becoming a go-to for lower cost printed structural plastic parts. One characteristic that MJF shares with SLS is a sandpaper texture part finish. But give HP a few years and I am sure they will find a way to make it smooth.
Advantages of MJF:
All the advantages listed above for SLS
Massive team of HP developers continuously improving the process
Good selection of mainstream thermoplastic materials, including nylon and polypropylene
Other processes: We acknowledge that there are many new emerging processes in added manufacturing. Most of them are a derivative of the processes detailed above. We have outlined the main processes that our engineers turn to and thus is our current expertise.
For more information on the above processes, available materials and pricing you can go to the quoting page on our website: https://www.broadview3d.com/.
Of course, no automated quoting service can answer every question so we would love to hear from you directly concerning your application. We can be reached at info@broadviewproduct.com or via phone at (616)772-4560. We are here to help, and are looking forward to working with you soon!