Resources

Here you can find more info on 3D printing.

This is not a deep dive into the details of the printing process, but more of a practical overview to help you design parts for the process. There is a lot of freely available material on the internet if you want to understand the ins and outs of 3D printing.

FDM Printing Basics

Resin Printing Basics

3D Printing - What Is It?

3D printing is also known as additive manufacturing, additive layer manufacturing or rapid prototyping.

There are various different 3D printing technologies available today, but overall they all follow the same principle:

Produce a three dimensional part by adding material to it in layers. Each layer can be considered a 2D slice of the part. By printing dozens, hundreds or thousands of these layers on top of each other a 3D part is created.

Producing parts in this way has several advantages:

Efficient material use
No need for part specific tooling
Can produce complex geometry not possible with other manufacturing methods

We offer FDM and resin printing technologies to produce plastic parts. (See below to understand how these technologies work.)

If you are unsure what process to use, please get in contact and we can advise you on what process is most suitable for you application.

3D Printing Workflow Overview

1. Produce a 3D CAD model of the part you want to print.

2. The CAD model (usually in stl or 3mf file format) is imported into a slicer software which produces code that the printer can understand and use as instructions (usually a gcode file).

The slicer software does what the name suggests - it slices a 3D model into layers that can be treated as 2D representations of the part.

Slicer is also where the print settings are set based on the geometry, function and material used. For example, variables like infill percentage and layer thickness.

The slicer also detects and produces part supports where needed (with some manual intervention).

3. Printer produces the part following the instructions in the file from the slicer software.

4. Part is removed from the printer and post-processed as required.

For FDM prints this usually means removing build supports if they are used.

For resin prints this means removing build supports, washing the part to remove excess resin and curing the part before they are ready for use.