The Art of 3D Printing – Explained!
Fresh from the pages of science fiction comes 3d printing, but it’s not what you think. The concept of 3d printing is turning traditional manufacturing on its ear. In its basic form, 3d printing takes a concept, makes a prototype model which is used for specifications, feeds the specs into a “printer” and out pops your invention. Need 500 copies of your product? No problem! All the work of the 3d printer is done “in-house” so there’s no time lost while you wait for your product to be produced somewhere overseas and then shipped back. Welcome to the future! Only in this case, the future is now!
Welcome to Additive Manufacturing!
Additive manufacturing is the 3d printing keyword. The “additive” is whatever material you are printing with. Plastic is the most widely used (think milk-jugs or chess pieces), but current 3d printers are using a range of materials from metal to particle board. As far as “manufacturing” goes, inventors are limited only by their imagination.
3D Printers utilize layer-by-layer technology (also called “layering”) which is how an object is created. The printer – while following- the pre-loaded specifications – creates the object layer-by-layer much the same way a printer will create an image line-by-line. These super-fine layers of plastic slowly take shape until the programmed object has been created.
The whole process can take minutes or hours depending on the complexity of what is being printed.
Think Big, Print Big!
Additive manufacturing is relatively new and has only been on the market and in use since about 2003. But as the technology has evolved so has the size of the printer being used. It stands to reason that a large 3d printer will manufacture large objects (for example some aircraft components about size of a small gym bag). While a smaller printer will likewise produce something smaller like chess pieces or action figures.
In the bigger scheme of things, manufacturing is done faster and with less manpower. Whether that is good or bad depends on who is doing what.
For more information, please check out this video on Youtube.