3D printer - in every home
Hi, Giktayms! Here, probably, every second person already has a 3D printer, but still ... Today we want to talk a bit about one of the symbols of this decade. Today, 3D printers are no longer a trend or fashionable hobby, but quite working tools for creating prototypes, finished products, models and all sorts of spare parts, including spare parts for protein life forms :) The news now and again says that a three-dimensional printer, the prosthesis will be printed, then a model of the skull, then a piece of beak, then the dog will fix the paws - the technology is being developed, and in medical laboratories they gradually master the printing with living cells to recreate human internal organs.
For those who do not have a 3D printer at home (or even two), it is probably worth explaining what technology has achieved lately. There are not so many ways in themselves to produce a three-dimensional object in a fully or almost fully automatic mode. Actually, there are only two main approaches: take some amount of material and “remove all unnecessary” (that is, some of the material will go to waste, and it’s not a fact that they can be recycled and reused) or take and “grow” some “nothing "To the point that we need: to mold in the form, type in layers and glue, immediately make the necessary form the object in layers of viscous polymer and" harden "it in some way.
Actually, the first method (subtracting “extra” from the material) has been known in industry for quite some time: the top of the technology in this area is a multi-axis CNC turning and milling machine. It costs like a wing from an airplane, takes about the same space, requires a huge amount of energy and expensive tools, but ultimately allows you to create unique pieces in the form of monolithic structures:
')
Unfortunately, even though such machines are capable of very, very much, they are not omnipotent. Create a hollow ball, a cube or a dodecahedron without a single seam or hole “subtracting” the excess will not work.
This is where the second method comes to help, or rather, one of its subspecies. 3D printing.
Printing material "layers" can be done in completely different ways. The most popular and well-known methods: melting the raw powder with a laser in the right places to obtain layer outlines (DLS / SLS), using a photopolymer with curing it with a laser or other powerful source of UV radiation using a photo-mask (LSA), direct printing molten polymer.
Laser sintering is a great way to get parts from materials that cannot be fed in liquid form and cooled rapidly, while consuming an acceptable amount of energy. Powdered ceramics, metal, plastic are quickly and point-heated by a laser to a high temperature, after which they immediately “stick” to the ready-made layer and quickly release the received thermal energy, almost immediately returning to the “solid” state.
This technology makes it possible to make one of the most accurate and durable parts, to apply perfectly space materials and to work with an accuracy that coincides with the size of the used granules. There are downsides, wherever without them. The price of the printer is one of them. In addition, there is an alternative printing system that combines the supply of powder in about the same way as in "classic" 3D printers and instant "fusion" of particles on an existing model. It has its advantages, but the disadvantages directly follow from the design of the "print head".
Designs of complex shape require either printing supports and spacers, or tricky positioning of the model. Theoretically, a moving table with a large number of degrees of freedom and axes could save the situation, allowing the model to be turned at the right angle and continue printing “vertically”, but in practice there are some problems with this, both financial and dimensional. In general, technology is not for the home. Until.
Stereolithography also often uses a laser, but works in a different way. Some chemical compounds (photopolymers) can be in a liquid or viscous state, until they are exposed to light with the desired wavelength. After that, almost irreversible changes take place in the polymer structure, and at the point where the “right” light hits the polymer freezes. Thus, step by step, the model “appears” in a special bath with a solution. The process is somewhat reminiscent of growing crystals; only a laser beam focused at one point or an image of a new layer projected through a special mask is responsible for growth in the right direction.
Purely theoretically, stereolithography is the most accurate method of three-dimensional object creation: a similar technique is used to create microprocessors, and the minimum values ​​of the resulting structures are measured in nanometers. Unfortunately, such accuracy at home is currently unattainable (and not needed, by and large), but tens or hundreds of micrometers are quite real.
Everything with stereolithography is good, except for one sad fact: in the choice of material, you are limited to photopolymers and various resins. They are different in strength characteristics, but almost always inferior in strength to metals and ceramics. Another unpleasant moment is the price of the printer itself: a powerful laser or a UV projector is not cheap. The main application of such printers is the printing of high-precision samples for the jewelry industry, for the manufacture of molds on them and the subsequent smelting of finished products.
The third, most popular and well-known method is direct layered printing with molten plastic. Printers of this format - a great many, of all sizes, designs, with one, two, three print heads.
Such printers differ both in accuracy and in capabilities, but the most important thing is that they made a big “revolution” in popularizing the phenomenon of amateur 3D printing: hardware simplicity, high competition in different projects, availability of components and consumables led to that prices fell from a few thousand dollars to 3-5 hundreds.
To describe in detail all the possibilities, types of plastics and other design features for the hundredth time there is no point: GT already has an excellent selection of materials that describe working with fabbers (this is how 3D printers are called abroad).
The whole hub is devoted to three-dimensional printing: 3D printers , in which, in addition to reviews of various models of printers and technologies, there are quite interesting publications with both personal user experience and experience of Russian-made printers. Well, with the news of the industry, of course.
For example, here the user Stas_cake shares his experience in improving the quality of three-dimensional printing. For half a year working with a self-made (or rather self-assembled) printer, we managed to achieve very impressive results!
Here is a small publication from 3Dgeek user about raw materials for 3D printing of Russian and Chinese production.
Cyberon user story about domestic stereolithographic 3D-priter.
Another post about stereolithography, this time from user Slavik_Kenny - he shares his experience on using a DLP projector as a source of UV radiation for curing a resin.
User MagisterLudi talks about how three-dimensional printing from metal allows you to create unique parts and save a lot of money.
Well, if you still could not convince your wife / family / bosses / employees / friends that such a thing as a 3D printer will definitely come in handy - show them this picture. Perhaps, they will immediately come up with some interesting use for the fabber for themselves, and there they will be able to lend a hand before buying!
In M.Video stores, 3D Systems Cube Silver 381000 , 3D Systems CubeX 401383 and 3D Systems CubeX Trio 401385 are sold - if we are interested, we can review one of them.
Since we are on GT and here are all such advanced - don’t consider the difficulty, answer a couple of questions, tell us about your experience in 3D printing, about your printer, about pros and cons - let's make a kind of census of 3D print adherents.
Thanks for attention
Likbez
For those who do not have a 3D printer at home (or even two), it is probably worth explaining what technology has achieved lately. There are not so many ways in themselves to produce a three-dimensional object in a fully or almost fully automatic mode. Actually, there are only two main approaches: take some amount of material and “remove all unnecessary” (that is, some of the material will go to waste, and it’s not a fact that they can be recycled and reused) or take and “grow” some “nothing "To the point that we need: to mold in the form, type in layers and glue, immediately make the necessary form the object in layers of viscous polymer and" harden "it in some way.
Actually, the first method (subtracting “extra” from the material) has been known in industry for quite some time: the top of the technology in this area is a multi-axis CNC turning and milling machine. It costs like a wing from an airplane, takes about the same space, requires a huge amount of energy and expensive tools, but ultimately allows you to create unique pieces in the form of monolithic structures:
')
Unfortunately, even though such machines are capable of very, very much, they are not omnipotent. Create a hollow ball, a cube or a dodecahedron without a single seam or hole “subtracting” the excess will not work.
This is where the second method comes to help, or rather, one of its subspecies. 3D printing.
3D printing methods
Printing material "layers" can be done in completely different ways. The most popular and well-known methods: melting the raw powder with a laser in the right places to obtain layer outlines (DLS / SLS), using a photopolymer with curing it with a laser or other powerful source of UV radiation using a photo-mask (LSA), direct printing molten polymer.
Direct laser sintering
Laser sintering is a great way to get parts from materials that cannot be fed in liquid form and cooled rapidly, while consuming an acceptable amount of energy. Powdered ceramics, metal, plastic are quickly and point-heated by a laser to a high temperature, after which they immediately “stick” to the ready-made layer and quickly release the received thermal energy, almost immediately returning to the “solid” state.This technology makes it possible to make one of the most accurate and durable parts, to apply perfectly space materials and to work with an accuracy that coincides with the size of the used granules. There are downsides, wherever without them. The price of the printer is one of them. In addition, there is an alternative printing system that combines the supply of powder in about the same way as in "classic" 3D printers and instant "fusion" of particles on an existing model. It has its advantages, but the disadvantages directly follow from the design of the "print head".
Designs of complex shape require either printing supports and spacers, or tricky positioning of the model. Theoretically, a moving table with a large number of degrees of freedom and axes could save the situation, allowing the model to be turned at the right angle and continue printing “vertically”, but in practice there are some problems with this, both financial and dimensional. In general, technology is not for the home. Until.
Stereolithography
Stereolithography also often uses a laser, but works in a different way. Some chemical compounds (photopolymers) can be in a liquid or viscous state, until they are exposed to light with the desired wavelength. After that, almost irreversible changes take place in the polymer structure, and at the point where the “right” light hits the polymer freezes. Thus, step by step, the model “appears” in a special bath with a solution. The process is somewhat reminiscent of growing crystals; only a laser beam focused at one point or an image of a new layer projected through a special mask is responsible for growth in the right direction.
Purely theoretically, stereolithography is the most accurate method of three-dimensional object creation: a similar technique is used to create microprocessors, and the minimum values ​​of the resulting structures are measured in nanometers. Unfortunately, such accuracy at home is currently unattainable (and not needed, by and large), but tens or hundreds of micrometers are quite real.
Everything with stereolithography is good, except for one sad fact: in the choice of material, you are limited to photopolymers and various resins. They are different in strength characteristics, but almost always inferior in strength to metals and ceramics. Another unpleasant moment is the price of the printer itself: a powerful laser or a UV projector is not cheap. The main application of such printers is the printing of high-precision samples for the jewelry industry, for the manufacture of molds on them and the subsequent smelting of finished products.
"Classic" three-dimensional printing
The third, most popular and well-known method is direct layered printing with molten plastic. Printers of this format - a great many, of all sizes, designs, with one, two, three print heads.
Such printers differ both in accuracy and in capabilities, but the most important thing is that they made a big “revolution” in popularizing the phenomenon of amateur 3D printing: hardware simplicity, high competition in different projects, availability of components and consumables led to that prices fell from a few thousand dollars to 3-5 hundreds.
To describe in detail all the possibilities, types of plastics and other design features for the hundredth time there is no point: GT already has an excellent selection of materials that describe working with fabbers (this is how 3D printers are called abroad).
The whole hub is devoted to three-dimensional printing: 3D printers , in which, in addition to reviews of various models of printers and technologies, there are quite interesting publications with both personal user experience and experience of Russian-made printers. Well, with the news of the industry, of course.
For example, here the user Stas_cake shares his experience in improving the quality of three-dimensional printing. For half a year working with a self-made (or rather self-assembled) printer, we managed to achieve very impressive results!
Here is a small publication from 3Dgeek user about raw materials for 3D printing of Russian and Chinese production.
Cyberon user story about domestic stereolithographic 3D-priter.
Another post about stereolithography, this time from user Slavik_Kenny - he shares his experience on using a DLP projector as a source of UV radiation for curing a resin.
User MagisterLudi talks about how three-dimensional printing from metal allows you to create unique parts and save a lot of money.
Well, if you still could not convince your wife / family / bosses / employees / friends that such a thing as a 3D printer will definitely come in handy - show them this picture. Perhaps, they will immediately come up with some interesting use for the fabber for themselves, and there they will be able to lend a hand before buying!
In M.Video stores, 3D Systems Cube Silver 381000 , 3D Systems CubeX 401383 and 3D Systems CubeX Trio 401385 are sold - if we are interested, we can review one of them.
Since we are on GT and here are all such advanced - don’t consider the difficulty, answer a couple of questions, tell us about your experience in 3D printing, about your printer, about pros and cons - let's make a kind of census of 3D print adherents.
Thanks for attention
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/376877/
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