IFSM 310 - 3D Printing Stage 1

All things 3D printing

3D printing has matured beyond the hype of the early 2010s and now is expanding faster than ever, with new

technologies and applications emerging every day. To help both newcomers and veterans navigate the ever-changing

landscape of 3D printing we've collected all our knowledge in one place.

 Introduction to 3D printing

3D Printing & Additive Manufacturing - A Complete Overview Technologies, Materials, Designs & Applications

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What is 3D printing?

3D printing is a manufacturing process in which 3-dimensional objects are built up by depositing and fusing 2-dimensional layers of cured photopolymers, extruded thermoplastics, welded metals, or fused powders.

ISO/ASTM 52900, created in 2015 to standardize the terminology around 3D Printing, de�nes it as ‘the process of joining materials to make parts from 3D model data, usually layer upon layer, as opposed to subtractive manufacturing and formative manufacturing methodologies’.

In layman’s terms, it’s a new way of manufacturing things that’s quite di�erent from how things have ‘traditionally’ been made. It’s typically very fast, with low �xed setup costs, and can create much more complex geometries than were previously possible, with an ever-expanding list of materials. It has been used extensively in the engineering industry, particularly for prototyping and creating lightweight geometries, as well as in medicine, education, architecture, and entertainment.

What is additive manufacturing?

3D printing is also known as additive manufacturing however the phrases are used in di�erent contexts and have quite di�erent connotations.

3D printing is commonly associated with maker culture, hobbyists and amateurs, small desktop printers, cheap printing technologies like FDM, and low-cost materials such as ABS and PLA (we’ll explain all those acronyms below). This is largely attributable to the democratization of 3D printing through a�ordable desktop machines like the original MakerBots and RepRaps, which also led to the explosion of 3D printing in 2009.

Hubs is a custom parts manufacturer o�ering 3D Printing, CNC machining, injection molding and sheet metal services. We specialise in making industrial-quality, competitively-priced prototypes & short production parts with FDM, SLS, SLA, MJF & DMLS.

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By contrast, additive manufacturing (or AM for short) is almost always associated with commercial and industrial applications.

Rapid prototyping is another phrase that’s sometimes used to refer to 3D printing technologies. In the 1980s when they were �rst invented, they were referred to as rapid prototyping technologies, not 3D printing or additive manufacturing, and the association stuck because back then 3D printing was usually only suitable for prototypes, not production parts.

In recent years additive manufacturing has matured into an excellent solution for many kinds of production parts, and other manufacturing technologies (like CNC machining) have become cheaper and more accessible for prototyping. So whilst some people still use ‘rapid prototyping’ to refer to 3D printing, the phrase is evolving to refer to all forms of very fast prototyping.

Additive vs traditional manufacturing

Additive manufacturing has only been around since the 1980s, so the manufacturing methods developed before it are often referred to as traditional manufacturing. To understand the major di�erences between additive and traditional manufacturing, let's categorize all methods into 3 groups: additive, subtractive and formative manufacturing.

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Additive manufacturing Additive manufacturing builds up 3D objects by depositing and fusing 2D layers of material.

This method has almost no startup time or costs, making it ideal for prototyping. Parts can be made rapidly and discarded after use. Parts can also be produced in almost any geometry, which is one of the core strengths of 3D printing.

One of the biggest limitations of 3D printing is that most parts are inherently anisotropic or not fully dense, meaning they usually lack the material and mechanical properties of parts made via subtractive or formative techniques. Due to �uctuations in cooling or curing conditions, di�erent prints of the same part are also prone to slight variations, which puts limitations on consistency and repeatability.

Subtractive manufacturing Subtractive manufacturing, such as milling and turning, creates objects by removing (machining) material from a block of solid material that's also often referred to as a 'blank'.

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Almost any material can be machined in some way, making it a widely used technique. Because of the amount of control over every aspect of the process this method is capable of producing incredibly accurate parts with high repeatability. Most designs require Computer Aided Manufacturing (CAM) to plot customized tool paths and e�cient material removal, which adds setup time and costs, but for the majority of designs, it’s the most cost-e�ective method of production.

The major limitation of subtractive manufacturing is that the cutting tool must be able to reach all surfaces to remove material, which limits design complexity quite a lot. While machines like 5-axis machines eliminate some of these restrictions, complex parts still need to be re-orientated during the machining process, adding time and cost. Subtractive manufacturing is also a wasteful process due to the large amounts of material removed to produce the �nal part geometry.

Formative manufacturing Formative manufacturing, such as injection molding and stamping, creates objects by forming or molding materials into shape with heat and/or pressure.

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Formative techniques are designed to reduce the marginal cost of producing individual parts, but the creation of unique molds or machines used in the production process means setup costs are very, very high. Regardless, these techniques can produce parts in a large range of materials (both metals and plastics) with close to �awless repeatability, so for high volume production, they’re almost always the most cost- e�cient.

How these methods compare Manufacturing is complex, and there are too many dimensions for comprehensively comparing each method against all others. It is near impossible to optimize all at once for cost, speed, geometric complexity, materials, mechanical properties, surface �nish, tolerances, and repeatability.

In such complex situations heuristics and rules of thumb are more valuable:

Additive manufacturing is best for low volumes, complex designs, and when speed is essential. Subtractive manufacturing is best for medium volumes, simple geometries, tight tolerances, and hard materials Formative manufacturing is best for the high-volume production of identical parts.

Cost per part is usually the governing factor determining which manufacturing process is best. As a rough approximation the unit costs per method can be visualized like this:

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Learn more about 3D printing vs CNC machining. 3D printing is becoming cheaper every year and in some instances, it is starting to compete with injection molding for cost e�ciency. However it’s usually 3D printing and CNC machining that are considered interchangeable for particular jobs, so we’ve written a thorough guide comparing them side by side. Read more about 3D printing vs CNC machining.

How does a 3D printer work?

3D printing technology grows more varied every year and there are now thousands of di�erent printers available. They each have their own way of working, but they all share one thing in common:

3D printers work by adding together 2-dimensional layers of material to form 3- dimensional objects, based on a digital 3D model converted into G-Code through a slicer program.

In the next section, The di�erent types of 3D printing, you will �nd an overview of how the di�erent types of printers layer material.

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A brief history of 3D printing

3D printing began as an idea for accelerating industrial product development through faster prototyping. Even though there were a few patents beforehand, Chuck Hull is typically credited with the invention of the 3D printer via his Stereolithography Apparatus (SLA), patented in 1984.

Foundations Despite Chuck’s fame, multiple technologies were being developed in parallel in the late 1980s, and there were several companies founded in this period that was critical to the development of the technology.

1981 - the �rst patent for a device using UV light to cure photopolymers was awarded to Hideo Kodama in Japan. He designed it for ‘rapid prototyping’ as it was intended for making models and prototypes, but there was no interest and the patent was abandoned. 1984 - French inventors Alain Le Mehaute, Olivier de Witte, and Jean Claude André submitted a patent in which, like Hideo’s, UV light was used to cure photopolymers. General Electric abandoned the patent citing a lack of signi�cant business potential. 1984 - only a few weeks after Le Mehaute, American Charles ‘Chuck’ Hull �led his own patent for an ‘Apparatus for Production of Three-Dimensional Objects by Stereolithography’, thus also coining the term ‘stereolithography’ (SLA). 1987 - Hull invented the STL �le, and in the same year founded 3D Systems. 1987 - American Carl Deckard �led a patent for Selective Laser Sintering (SLS), and in the same year co-founded Desktop Manufacturing (DTM) Corp. (acquired by 3D Systems in 2001). 1989 - American S. Scott Crump submits a patent for Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM), and in the same year founded Stratasys with his wife.

Commercialization From the late 1980s to the early 1990s the industry underwent very rapid commercialization. The �rst machines were big and expensive and their makers competed for industrial prototyping contracts with mass-market manufacturers in the automotive, aerospace, health, and consumer goods industries.

1987 - 3D Systems released the �rst commercial SLA printer, the ‘SLA-1’. 1992 - The FDM patent was �nally granted to Stratasys, which led them to release the �rst FDM printer, the ‘3D Modeler’. 1992 - DTM released the �rst commercial SLS printer, the ‘Sinterstation 2000’

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1994 - German company Electro Optical Systems (EOS), founded in 1989, unveiled its ‘EOSINT M160’, the �rst commercial metal 3D printer

Democratization In the early 2000s the �erce competition for pro�ts, developments in material science, and the ending of many patents created an environment in which 3D printing �nally became a�ordable for the masses. This was the decade that 3D printing took o� in the popular imagination - manufacturing, which had always been the domain of heavy industry and big money, came to the people.

2005 - The open-source RepRap Project (for ‘Replicated Rapid Prototyper’) launched with the aim of creating self-replicating 3D printers capable of printing their own parts, causing popular interest in the technology to skyrocket. 2009 - Key FDM patents fell into the public domain and MakerBot launched their desktop 3D printer, the ‘Cupcake CNC’. It cost hundreds of dollars, not thousands, and all components were downloadable from Thingiverse, a website dedicated to the sharing of user-created digital design �les. 2012 - Formlabs release the ‘Form 1’, the �rst a�ordable SLA printer, through a record- breaking Kickstarter campaign that raised $2.95 million in funding. They were sued by 3D Systems for patent infringement, but the case was settled in favor of Formlabs 2013 - Hubs launches as a peer-to-peer 3D printing service, allowing mass transactions between people buying prints and people with machines. It quickly grew to be the single biggest 3D printing platform in the world with over 50,000 printing ‘hubs’, before pivoting to focus on helping its business customers by making all forms of custom manufacturing more accessible. 2014 - Key SLS patents fell into the public domain, leading to a whole crop of companies making smaller and more a�ordable SLS printers.

Maturity From 2018 the hype around 3D printing had largely disappeared from mass media, but interest in commercial applications for businesses of all sizes has never been higher. Today there are thousands of companies producing printers and o�ering all sorts of services leveraging 3D printing technology.

Learn more about the history of 3D printing There are many articles out there, most are just fun reads. For those looking to really delve deep into history, Wikipedia and Wohler Associates are the best resources.

Wikipedia - 3D printing Wohlers Report 2016 - History of Additive Manufacturing

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