Mohammad Sadat Hussain Rafsanjani :
“My necessity of modeling prototypes drove me to take 3D printing professionally”, it was the reply of a 3D printing evangelist Imran Ahmed, now a reformed maker, designer and one of the co-founder and managing director of Techno Needs, countries one of the top 3D printing service provider. Imran Ahmed was one of the co-organizer of Make-A-Thon 2016. After completing his graduation from KUET in pharmacy, he joined BEXIMCO Pharmaceuticals’ research and development wing as a scientist. While working over there he felt the need of a maker community to produce rapid prototypes using 3D printing.
3D printing is being considered as the pioneering technology the world has ever seen. Scientists are naming the phenomenon transcendence of modern science, marginality of the infinity and sublimity of printing decadence. The proximity of electronics and computer science have made it possible to engrave such a stratagem to recreate ancient artifacts or modeling complex machineries easily.
For the neophyte, you may be wondering around what is a 3d printer? Is it a device that just use paper and inks to draw shapes or it makes something new that never existed? Well, you can say it is a GOD machine that can build anything you want from it. The apparatus is formally called self-replicating machine (SRM), a device that can replicate itself, fabricate an exact copy of it. The concept was to produce a prototype that can manufacture a three dimensional object by laying successive layers of material on top of the layers again and again to form the shape, a process called joining. That is how 3D printing differs from traditional manufacturing as that involves removal of material by cutting down extraneous material off or drilling in, also called subtractive approach whereas 3D printing uses an additive approach. The additive manufacturing process is also very time consuming, heavily rely on a computer simulated 3D model or CAD design which when placed on 3D printer starts to construct. The design is also sometimes very hard to achieve as needs to be pitch perfected and expertise in computer aided designing, simulation and modeling is needed. In a 3D printer a grid is coordinated to produce a prototype. The grid has three axis thus a solid three dimensional object can be created using digital motors that can move along the axis easily. Although this is the common type of 3D printer, there are other industry grade machines.
Three main technologies are employed industrially and practiced in the field of additive manufacturing. These are Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) which uses molten solids to fabricate prototype, Selective Laser Sintering (SLS) uses powders as the raw material and Stereo Lithography (SLA) requires resin. Each technology has its own potential, pros and cons.
In a FDM 3D printer, a nozzle is attached on the grid and the nozzle is controlled by several motors. The motors are attached with some belts that guide the movement of the nozzle head. The nozzle is also called extruder as it extrudes the filament in molted state and lay downs layers on the bed. The bed is a platform where the prototype is printed. It is moveable too in all directions.
Like we said before, FDM uses solid materials to manufacture a prototype. This material is called filament, filament can be of various types and packed as rolling cable. Two of the common and de facto standard of filament types is Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene (ABS) and Poly Lactic Acid (PLA). ABS is like industry grade plastic material, it is impact resistant and durable. Therefore functional parts are built around it. On the other hand PLA is biodegradable and easy to print. It is also popular for using in consumer production.
PLA has recently overtaken the 3D printing industry because of its biodegradable feature. It is the most used and voted as the number one raw material for the additive manufacturing. Most of the time, PLA is made of organics substances like corn starch and sugar cane which are very environment friendly. This is why sometimes it is called the green plastic. This is the reason why when manufacturing something in the printer, it never emits any bad odor or smell which makes it perfectly safe for home and classroom use. Moreover, formation of PLA does not need heated bed though it helps the process. The shrinkage rate is lower than ABS in PLA, this is very useful sometimes. PLA melts down in about 180°-230° centigrade, slightly brittle. Thus, produced products should not be placed in a heated place for a long time to avoid deformation.
PLA can be given feels and looks of metal and wood. The main idea is to give the consumers a better look and feel. These PLA filaments are produced by mixing cedar, birch, bamboo, coconut, olive or ebony fibers with PLA. The specific mixture gives a wood like finish. This is mostly used for home decoration and metal or wood PLAs have high demand for their nice metallic or wood finish visual appearance. PLA metal filaments are very durable, they even can be polished and ideal for use as jewelry, statue, hardware and artifacts replicas. The metal look can be brass, copper, bronze, aluminum, stainless steel. But it requires fine-tuning of nozzle, flow rate and post processing. Thus printing difficulties are high.
ABS is the second most used thermoplastic raw material. It is durable, lightweight and easily extruded. The material uses the same plastics which are used by LEGO toy bricks. ABS is losing popularity because its demerits like causing fumes. Therefore, the production must be carried out in a well-ventilated place to avoid injury. ABS needs a high temperature bed, approximately 50-100 degree centigrade and to melt down it requires 210°-250° centigrade. If the bed is not heated properly, the bottom layer will cool down and contract rapidly thus preventing the upper layers to be attached. Although it is easy to process after printing but wrapping or curling may be caused during printing which is a big disadvantage. ABS is normally used in automotive parts manufacturing, electronic housing equipment and children toys. The containers produced with ABS are not food safe. The only thing that keeps the ABS in the racing is its high durability.
Recently a Germany based company has achieved a major breakthrough in producing some advanced 3D printing filaments. These filaments are fully biodegradable and made from renewable resources without adding animal organic substance. The company is called two BEars. They produce such filaments mixing lignin, PLA and some additives. Lignin is the main components of wood. The filament is called bioFila, it gives very stunning looks to the manufactured product. To give extra shining to the texture one can use the silk version. This version is called linen although it has nothing to do with it, the name comes from the look.
SLS uses laser technologies to fuse tiny particles of glass, ceramic or plastic to form a three dimensional object. As SLS system can produce high quality product from ceramic to flexible plastic, often customized products are manufactured with this medium like dental retainers or hearing aid devices. In order to prototype, a design is produced the STL file generated, fed to the 3D printer. Inside the printer, plastic powders such as nylon is dispersed in all directions which form a layer on the bed. Then a high precision laser beam is projected on the thin layer to cut make the desired shape with a view to tracing a cross-section of an object. Then another layer of particles is placed on top of the platform and again the laser makes a cut. The laser beam melts the particles and when cooled down they bonds together thus making a solid object. The repetitive laser cutting is called sintering. Sintering mainly heats up the powder up to its melting point or below the melting point. Instead of using nylon dust, one can use wax or carbon powders too. In that case it will be more cost-effective. SLS does not require additional supports thus this method is less time consuming. SLS is popular for printing prototypes and manufacturing the final products. It is mostly used in aerospace industry where demand of small quantity products built with high quality materials. Till now, SLC is mostly used when complex and delicate objects are needed to be printed. SLS is not home safe as potential risk is involved in handling high powered lasers.
The third most popular and one of the oldest additive manufacturing device is SLA, stereo lithograph apparatus (SLA) that can converts liquid plastics or resin into model objects. The device has four components: a tank to contain photopolymer liquid plastic, a perforated platform, ultraviolet laser and a computer to control the laser and platform. The tank is placed just beneath the platform. The platform can be moved up and down thus can make a contact with the bottom resin tank. A thin layer of photopolymer of 0.05-0.15 mm is exposed above the perforated platform in the initial step of the SLA process. As soon as the UV laser hits the perforated platform, the pattern of the object gets printed. The liquid hardens when the laser touches it. The platform is again lowered and touches the resins, the laser is projected to make a cut. This process gets repeated further until the printing is finished. When finished, the object is dipped in liquid solvent to remove extraneous plastics or resin. Later the prototype can be placed inside an oven to perfect the finishing. In this way the small objects are printed in few hours where complex design or large objects can take few days to be printed. SL is fairly a quick and inexpensive way to build prototype. Thus sometimes it is called rapid prototyping. The produced products is very durable and accurate, gives a fine look.
“My necessity of modeling prototypes drove me to take 3D printing professionally”, it was the reply of a 3D printing evangelist Imran Ahmed, now a reformed maker, designer and one of the co-founder and managing director of Techno Needs, countries one of the top 3D printing service provider. Imran Ahmed was one of the co-organizer of Make-A-Thon 2016. After completing his graduation from KUET in pharmacy, he joined BEXIMCO Pharmaceuticals’ research and development wing as a scientist. While working over there he felt the need of a maker community to produce rapid prototypes using 3D printing.
3D printing is being considered as the pioneering technology the world has ever seen. Scientists are naming the phenomenon transcendence of modern science, marginality of the infinity and sublimity of printing decadence. The proximity of electronics and computer science have made it possible to engrave such a stratagem to recreate ancient artifacts or modeling complex machineries easily.
For the neophyte, you may be wondering around what is a 3d printer? Is it a device that just use paper and inks to draw shapes or it makes something new that never existed? Well, you can say it is a GOD machine that can build anything you want from it. The apparatus is formally called self-replicating machine (SRM), a device that can replicate itself, fabricate an exact copy of it. The concept was to produce a prototype that can manufacture a three dimensional object by laying successive layers of material on top of the layers again and again to form the shape, a process called joining. That is how 3D printing differs from traditional manufacturing as that involves removal of material by cutting down extraneous material off or drilling in, also called subtractive approach whereas 3D printing uses an additive approach. The additive manufacturing process is also very time consuming, heavily rely on a computer simulated 3D model or CAD design which when placed on 3D printer starts to construct. The design is also sometimes very hard to achieve as needs to be pitch perfected and expertise in computer aided designing, simulation and modeling is needed. In a 3D printer a grid is coordinated to produce a prototype. The grid has three axis thus a solid three dimensional object can be created using digital motors that can move along the axis easily. Although this is the common type of 3D printer, there are other industry grade machines.
Three main technologies are employed industrially and practiced in the field of additive manufacturing. These are Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) which uses molten solids to fabricate prototype, Selective Laser Sintering (SLS) uses powders as the raw material and Stereo Lithography (SLA) requires resin. Each technology has its own potential, pros and cons.
In a FDM 3D printer, a nozzle is attached on the grid and the nozzle is controlled by several motors. The motors are attached with some belts that guide the movement of the nozzle head. The nozzle is also called extruder as it extrudes the filament in molted state and lay downs layers on the bed. The bed is a platform where the prototype is printed. It is moveable too in all directions.
Like we said before, FDM uses solid materials to manufacture a prototype. This material is called filament, filament can be of various types and packed as rolling cable. Two of the common and de facto standard of filament types is Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene (ABS) and Poly Lactic Acid (PLA). ABS is like industry grade plastic material, it is impact resistant and durable. Therefore functional parts are built around it. On the other hand PLA is biodegradable and easy to print. It is also popular for using in consumer production.
PLA has recently overtaken the 3D printing industry because of its biodegradable feature. It is the most used and voted as the number one raw material for the additive manufacturing. Most of the time, PLA is made of organics substances like corn starch and sugar cane which are very environment friendly. This is why sometimes it is called the green plastic. This is the reason why when manufacturing something in the printer, it never emits any bad odor or smell which makes it perfectly safe for home and classroom use. Moreover, formation of PLA does not need heated bed though it helps the process. The shrinkage rate is lower than ABS in PLA, this is very useful sometimes. PLA melts down in about 180°-230° centigrade, slightly brittle. Thus, produced products should not be placed in a heated place for a long time to avoid deformation.
PLA can be given feels and looks of metal and wood. The main idea is to give the consumers a better look and feel. These PLA filaments are produced by mixing cedar, birch, bamboo, coconut, olive or ebony fibers with PLA. The specific mixture gives a wood like finish. This is mostly used for home decoration and metal or wood PLAs have high demand for their nice metallic or wood finish visual appearance. PLA metal filaments are very durable, they even can be polished and ideal for use as jewelry, statue, hardware and artifacts replicas. The metal look can be brass, copper, bronze, aluminum, stainless steel. But it requires fine-tuning of nozzle, flow rate and post processing. Thus printing difficulties are high.
ABS is the second most used thermoplastic raw material. It is durable, lightweight and easily extruded. The material uses the same plastics which are used by LEGO toy bricks. ABS is losing popularity because its demerits like causing fumes. Therefore, the production must be carried out in a well-ventilated place to avoid injury. ABS needs a high temperature bed, approximately 50-100 degree centigrade and to melt down it requires 210°-250° centigrade. If the bed is not heated properly, the bottom layer will cool down and contract rapidly thus preventing the upper layers to be attached. Although it is easy to process after printing but wrapping or curling may be caused during printing which is a big disadvantage. ABS is normally used in automotive parts manufacturing, electronic housing equipment and children toys. The containers produced with ABS are not food safe. The only thing that keeps the ABS in the racing is its high durability.
Recently a Germany based company has achieved a major breakthrough in producing some advanced 3D printing filaments. These filaments are fully biodegradable and made from renewable resources without adding animal organic substance. The company is called two BEars. They produce such filaments mixing lignin, PLA and some additives. Lignin is the main components of wood. The filament is called bioFila, it gives very stunning looks to the manufactured product. To give extra shining to the texture one can use the silk version. This version is called linen although it has nothing to do with it, the name comes from the look.
SLS uses laser technologies to fuse tiny particles of glass, ceramic or plastic to form a three dimensional object. As SLS system can produce high quality product from ceramic to flexible plastic, often customized products are manufactured with this medium like dental retainers or hearing aid devices. In order to prototype, a design is produced the STL file generated, fed to the 3D printer. Inside the printer, plastic powders such as nylon is dispersed in all directions which form a layer on the bed. Then a high precision laser beam is projected on the thin layer to cut make the desired shape with a view to tracing a cross-section of an object. Then another layer of particles is placed on top of the platform and again the laser makes a cut. The laser beam melts the particles and when cooled down they bonds together thus making a solid object. The repetitive laser cutting is called sintering. Sintering mainly heats up the powder up to its melting point or below the melting point. Instead of using nylon dust, one can use wax or carbon powders too. In that case it will be more cost-effective. SLS does not require additional supports thus this method is less time consuming. SLS is popular for printing prototypes and manufacturing the final products. It is mostly used in aerospace industry where demand of small quantity products built with high quality materials. Till now, SLC is mostly used when complex and delicate objects are needed to be printed. SLS is not home safe as potential risk is involved in handling high powered lasers.
The third most popular and one of the oldest additive manufacturing device is SLA, stereo lithograph apparatus (SLA) that can converts liquid plastics or resin into model objects. The device has four components: a tank to contain photopolymer liquid plastic, a perforated platform, ultraviolet laser and a computer to control the laser and platform. The tank is placed just beneath the platform. The platform can be moved up and down thus can make a contact with the bottom resin tank. A thin layer of photopolymer of 0.05-0.15 mm is exposed above the perforated platform in the initial step of the SLA process. As soon as the UV laser hits the perforated platform, the pattern of the object gets printed. The liquid hardens when the laser touches it. The platform is again lowered and touches the resins, the laser is projected to make a cut. This process gets repeated further until the printing is finished. When finished, the object is dipped in liquid solvent to remove extraneous plastics or resin. Later the prototype can be placed inside an oven to perfect the finishing. In this way the small objects are printed in few hours where complex design or large objects can take few days to be printed. SL is fairly a quick and inexpensive way to build prototype. Thus sometimes it is called rapid prototyping. The produced products is very durable and accurate, gives a fine look.
