3D Printing

3D printing has become the new technology that many people are interested in. It has struck the attention of many companies and is certainly getting people tweeting, talking, and blogging. In many industries, it provides advantages such as production costs, complexity, communication, and innovation.

But many people have questions regarding 3D printing: How much will it cost? Why do we need this? What are the benefits of this? How can we do this? Most of these questions will be answered by the time you finish reading this article.

3D printing is a type of additive manufacturing where a 3D digital model is physically printed using a 3D printing machine. It extrudes layer upon layer of polymer material to build up objects with infinite designs.The way it is processed is that it is first created on a CAD (Computer Aided Design) program. The 3D printer uses something called filament that connects to the back of the 3D printer, which is a threadlike fiber material that is used to print with.

I have personally held filament and  would describe it as a cable-like wire made of plastic. One of the main reasons why it is ideal to use filament in 3D printing is because of its high melting point, making it easier to manipulate and create objects.

There are two main types of filament, ABS and PLA. The major difference between ABS and PLA is that ABS is usually stronger. Ben Heck from “The Ben Heck Show” on YouTube says, “It’s pretty much exactly what they use in any sort of consumer product like your video game controller or what’s housing your computer monitor.”

PLA type filament is actually an organic filament; it’s made from corn so it’s an environment friendly material. PLA is a newer type of filament and anything “green” oriented towards helping the environment is something I am always interested in. so it does draw attention from some customers. However, due to the fact that PLA’s organic nature is biodegradable it is not as strong as ABS. A 3D printer consists of a heated bed to keep the plastic soft and flexible for formation. A pro of PLA is that when you’re printing something large on the heated bed, it’s less likely to bond upon itself which makes the material better for stability. ABS material will bend and carve off, whereas PLA tends to chip and break easily if bent.

Filament is also great for 3D printing because you can buy it in many different colors, textures, materials, and diameters.

Heck says, “It auto generated the support material to keep this straight so when it did print the top it had something supporting it.”

The 3D printer is smart enough to create support material so that if some objects you have created are floating in mid-air, they have some supportive structure. After you have chosen your filament and connected it to the 3D printer it is then exported from the computer into a certain file. After that step, it is sent to a 3D printer using a flash drive.

3D printing seems like a one click procedure, but it actually has a lot of elements embedded into it that you have to do.

I had mentioned advantages that 3D printing could provide to businesses and I’d like to start with the first one, which is production cost. This specific printing process cuts the traditional costs of an early stage production like traveling to production facilities or building expensive prototypes. Within hours, you’re able to see what your product looks like without having to spend the money involved in product models, this is much more cost efficient.

In fact, NASA is set to launch a 3D printer into space for the first time. In an interview with PRESSTV, Dave Korsmeyer, from the NASA Ames Research Center stated, “It’ll give us an opportunity to build our own systems, our own components in space, to build the repair pieces to manufacture the small parts that otherwise would take frankly too long to get on a next a base flight for resupply.”

Scientists and Engineers are currently developing a printer that can withstand vibrations of launch and different air pressures.

Another purpose for this amazing development is complexity. People are creating templates for physical printing such as weapons, phone cases, acoustic guitars, and even hanging lights. At this current moment in the high tech era, people are always looking for ways to make their ideas better. This sometimes leads to a more complex structure in their product. 3D printing helps people reach a level of complexity that simply could not have been produced physically in any other way.

3D printing plays a big part in improving communication because of its physicality aspect. For example, a design company could have a meeting regarding a new phone they would like to design. They draw sketches of how they want it to look and discuss the pros and cons of the phone within the organization. The next day they’re able to develop feedback from the pros and cons of the design. The company would be able to test the design in person because of 3D printing. Ideas they could have mentioned like weight, height, material, and indentations can all be implemented in a 3D modeling software, thus it is able to be 3D printed. Some executive opinions could be completely changed once witnessed in person. This plays a factor in design perfection and communication.

Innovation is something that has greatly increased since the invention of 3D printing. Since its creation, it has been able to give businesses much faster speed time to market. Not only does 3D printing help companies grow quicker, but this helps the creation of new products because people are now able to create multiple variations of a certain product much sooner than it would take to be made in a facility.  The 3D printer sometimes causes mistakes while printing, which could be a blessing in disguise on rare occasions because it could become a better looking design than the producer originally anticipated.  Overall, the cycle of creation has been enlarged through the use of 3D printing.

Although 3D printing has been the new eye candy for 3D modeling, it is not the only way to create 3D models physically. There is another method called laser-cutting, in which you can print your objects two dimensionally, and can arrange your pieces to create a three-dimensional object. In my Digital Design class, we were assigned a task of creating a board game. I designed an idea of creating a pyramid based board game broken up into four areas challenged by the environment, weather, and chance. I drew the basics of it on paper first. Next, I created it in Rhinoceros, which is a 3D modeling program.

After that we imported it into AutoCAD which is software that focuses on architecture. We made sure the dimensions and interlocking systems were correct. We then sent it to the laser cutting room and a couple weeks later the final product was amazing. This personal example has the same outcome as a 3D printer and shows how difficult this process really is. I wanted to demonstrate this other way of creating 3D objects because I think it is an aspect that many people underestimate. A standard 3D printer would not have been able to create something this large.

I am a Design Major so I personally have dealt with a 3D printer.  Through my experience I can say that it was completely mind-blowing to see something that I have created on the computer become a physical entity in an hour. Once I held the object in my hand, I glanced back at how far we were from creating this a decade ago and how far we have come since then. This is definitely a technology milestone that we have crossed and I am looking forward to more developments like this in the near future.