3D Printing from someone with Bonus EXP!

Baciere · August 24, 2015

Alright, so something in the 3D Printer video caught me off guard, that seemed like Luke and the boys forgot to follow a few steps when setting up their printer, though, all printers aren't the same and not all of them come with instruction manuals.

PART ONE - THE TYPES
Shameless Tomska reference.

I only have experience with FDM printing, but there are 3 major types that are used and are available for home purchase.

Fused Deposition Modeling - Fancy dandy printing plastic, just like your regular, printer that just lays down layers of hot plastic.
Stereolithography - Fancy dandy laser that again prints in plastic - it shoots UV light at a bathtub full of liquid plastic that sets in UV light.
Selective Laser Sintering - Another laser printer, but this time it sinters (melts) a metal powder, usually an aluminum based one, and wow is it messy.

You can pick up home based of all 3, though, price for performance, FDM is cheapest for the base, but medium in expensive for it's 'ink'. SLS is impractical unless you /need/ it to be made of metal, and Stereolithography is actually the middle route here, though the liquid can be messy.

PART TWO - THE INK

Now, this is a big thing. Some printers, like the Ultimaker 2 (video to hit youtube soon) only have 1 ink cartridge, allowing you to only print in one color, while others have up to 4 colors and 2 different support material cartridges allowing you to print in multiple colors at the same time.

Something that cropped up in the video was that he complained about changing ink - you need to slice the tip at an angle and ensure that you tell the printer you're changing inks. A lot of printers have a manual on how to do this, and it needs to calibrate itself (extrude the last bit of the last color and extrude a bit of the next color to make sure the print head is printing the right thickness).

I hear you going "Well then what's this support material!?". Well if you cool your jets for a moment, I'll tell you - the support material allows you to make either break away or solvable with water or acid (warning, the acid burns if you leave it on over time, don't do that, but you won't melt your hands away just touching it). This allows you to do some crazy things, like print an entire toy car with the axles and everything moving, or print a gearbox with the entirety of it working fresh out of the printer (after it's cooled, acid bathed, and dried off... so not really fresh out of the printer but you get the point).

PART THREE - THE USE

Something interesting about these printers, FDM in particular, is the rapid print times. You may wonder why you would do this and purchase one over anything else.

Well, for home users who don't have things break frequently, not a whole lot, and you do have to be wary of those applications where high temperature is of severe concern. The primary use of 3D printers was for an industry application called "Rapid Prototyping" - the name is exactly as it sounds, an application where you need a rapidly built part just to test how it fits in constraints of a project. It's primarily what was printed, where I used the 2 tower FDM printers ( 24x24x48 for the first, and 30x30x60 for the second, inches for all measurements) to allow us to rapidly make and test parts of various machines to see if the tolerances were close enough (there is a margin of error on the printer's side).

Some foreseeable uses of FDM printers in the home include, but aren't limited to - custom keycaps for your keyboard (assuming you know how to read a caliper), custom figurines you can paint (yes, you can paint FDM printed parts. It's actually rather common), rebuild a mouse housing to one that fits your hand because travel mice are all your family ever purchases and you hate getting the hand me downs (er, that's a touch specific...), custom wrist rests (say, for your Orion Spark with the crummy wrist rest... Logitech I'm looking at you), custom router casings to personalize your gear, small plastic parts for repairs, and a half dozen other things. The only limiting factors are how much plastic ink you have, and how big your workspace is.

PART FOUR - THE FUTURE

It's spooky isn't it?

So, now we're here, we've got the technology as it sits right now. But what about the future of this? Well, as we figure out how to get more and more detailed and precise in FDM printers for lower cost, we'll eventually be able to make pretty wicked 3D printed things.

There's a company that has made a completely food safe 3D printer that prints using SLS technologies in melted sugar to turn it into caramel, there is a team researching how to 3D print biological constructs, there are a couple of companies looking into 'flexible' 3D printing techniques that allow a printer to rapidly switch between two printing types to allow more flexibility (as each type has it's strengths and weaknesses as far as accuracy, printing size, cost, time and the like go), and a half dozen other fancy things, like 3D printing electronics directly into a prototype part using a tin/copper twisted thread that's 'glued' into place with an insulating semi-melting rubber, and more.

This stuff is amazing, and supporting it ensures we get all of these cool features to play with.

Now go, be free, and art, tech, and geek up the world with your 3d printed creations.