How 3D printing can make manufacturing easier

3D printing, also known as “rapid prototyping” or “additive manufacturing”, is based on the layering principle, an additive process by which the objects to be printed are built layer upon layer from several liquid or powder-like substances.

In its course, chemical and/or physical processes precipitating curing and/or melting take place. For those reasons, the typical materials used are artificial resins, plastics, metals, ceramics and paper.

Manufacturers currently use a number of 3D print processes, which in their application are fundamentally alike except for a few patented variations.

Among the most notable processes employed are selective laser melting, electron beam melting for metals, selective laser sintering for plastics, stereo lithography, digital light processing, polyjet modelling for photopolymers, and fused deposition modelling for thermoplastics.

Most 3D printers process only a single type of material or some kind of blend. There have been tests, though, to use plastics with different degrees of hardness and colour in a combined printing process.

Stratasys took out a patent on a variation of layering by melting, or FDM technology (fused deposition modelling).

The FDM process melts delicate, semi-liquid strands of the thermoplastic acrylnitril-butadienestyrol (ABS) with a spray nozzle, piling layer upon layer to eventually assume the final object’s shape.

The PolyJet technology deploys photopolymers which are instantly cured under UV light and indistinguishable from products made by injection moulding.