Sunday, May 19, 2013

The Advent Of 3D Printers

By Douglas Rathbone


The new age of 3D printers has finally arrived. Soon, companies and people at home will be to create almost any kind of object they wish within a matter of hours. From a simple toy to an elaborate blueprint for a building, these machines can take even the most intricate designs and create them quickly and efficiently with little materials cost.

The idea behind these devices is that they will make things cheaper and easier to create. By interpreting a blueprint of two dimensional item, the machine can make a precision copy of it multiple times, each with the same level of comparison as the other. This can be done through extrusion or granular layering processes.

Melted down organic or synthetic compounds make up the majority of manufacturing methods. This is a good way to make details come out the same in multiple pieces. Making simple prototypes of initial designs this way is a lot easier than sending them off to a company who is put on a contract. From simple additions to entirely new products, any kind of product design can be created quickly and cheaply.

The extrusion method of manufacture involves liquefied or semi-liquefied materials to be loaded into the machine, which it then extrudes out in rapid movements to create the item as fast as possible. The most common materials for extrusion printing are thermoplastics and other synthetic plastic compounds. These are easier to liquefy, store, and mold into the exact shape of the item requested.

Granular manufacture involves metals, usually cut into thin sheets that can come together and create a design. Metal alloys and thermoplastics can be sturdier and longer lasting than more organic compounds, but are also slightly more cost intensive. As such, initial designs are typically cast through the extrusion method first before being finalized.

The granular method of processing involves a ground-up building of the design. A foundation is laid with the initial materials, and then the product is built upwards as materials are stacked and interwoven with one another. This tends to be a very effective form of printing because designers can see how difficult it would be to manufacture the product outside of the printer's effectiveness.

Despite the initial buy-in price, the overall cost-effectiveness of investing in 3D printers is well worth it. Instead of having to contract out to an engineering company and waiting months to finalize a prototype, designs can be made and improved upon within minutes and hours. This in turn gives the final retail customer cost savings.




About the Author:



No comments: