3D PRINTING ON A 3D PRINTER

Printing 3D models on a 3D printer from the company KOLORO

3D technology does not stand still, and if 3D movies have long been part of our lives, 3D printing will become a mass phenomenon just tomorrow.

And today – 3D printing service has already become popular and affordable! Printing a 3D model on a 3D printer has become an indispensable part of the modern manufacturing process.

3D printing is the creation of a volumetric and detailed product according to a given graphical form, as a result of converting a three-dimensional graphic image into a real physical object. A 3D product is formed by layer-by-layer “building up” of a monolithic object or creating individual parts of a prefabricated object. A volumetric model of the future product can be obtained with the help of a 3D scanner or by creating its 3D form – by a designer-constructor.

3D printing is done on a device called a 3D printer using a variety of materials (silicone, concrete, plastic, acrylic, hydrogel, paper, wood fibers, gypsum, metal, nylon, polymer or stone chips, etc.). The technology of layer-by-layer printing of volumetric objects was invented back in the late 80s of the last century, but being imperfect, it was considered a technology promising for the distant future.

Thanks to the active development of high technology in the new millennium, 3D printers have become so tightly integrated into all areas of life that they have become available for use even in the home! Already now folk craftsmen are assembling 3D printers with their own hands, from “improvised” materials or special sets of parts, complete with stores selling 3D printers.

But, without special engineering skills, you can risk to undertake only the assembly of simple printer models – for printing elementary objects. A professional 3D printer has much more features and better print quality, and therefore allows you to quickly and efficiently print any 3D object you need!

Applications of 3D printing

3D printing is used to create a real object of unique shape with the most accurate dimensions. Our company, as a professional in the market of branding, graphic design and production of prototypes of various products, is ready to provide customers with 3D printing services of any complexity, using the most modern technologies.

For example, creating metal molds is now becoming an extremely wasteful approach to manufacturing in many cases. Therefore, we suggest you to pay attention to the possibility of creating silicone molds, in most cases giving the final result no worse than molds made of other materials. Resulting in significant savings in pre-production, as well as lower production costs, which will increase demand.

In addition to high profitability, silicone molds provide good quality of the molded product, because due to the ease of processing, elasticity and strength of silicone achieves high accuracy of detailing of the object and ease of removing it from the resulting mold. Small batch production using silicone molds is especially profitable! We will not only create a 3D model of your product, but also further provide services for its production!

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Types of 3D printers

Although the variety of types of 3D printers is constantly increasing, the main types of 3d printers can be distinguished according to the following characteristics:

– Price (from 500 USD and up to 1 million dollars);
– Method of printing (the most common method – layer-by-layer “build-up” of a monolithic object, but there is also laser and powder baking of raw materials for printing);
– Materials for 3D printing (oil plastic – ABS, plastics of vegetable origin – PLA, PLE, nylon, gypsum, metal powder, concrete, etc.).

Here are the 3D printer companies that are the market leaders:

• 3D Systems;
• Z-Corporation;
• Stratasys, Inc;
• Phenix Systems;
• Optomec, Inc;
• Geometries
• EOS Electro Optical Systems;
• Object;
• Microbot.

The popularity of 3D printers is constantly growing, and as a result, their prices are gradually decreasing. But, professional 3D printers are still quite expensive devices, the high technology of which requires specialized knowledge and skills!

3D printer applications

Going back to the questions of what are 3D printers and what are the applications of 3D printing, it must be said that today 3D printers are so deeply embedded in our lives that they are used both to create plastic chess pieces at home and in Hollywood. For example, for prototyping full-fledged models of cars of the distant or near future, or even today’s models – in order to save money for the movie budget (the most famous case – “printing” the prototype of the AstonMartin DB-5 car for the last movie about the adventures of James Bond). What else can be printed on a 3D printer?

3D printer printing is used in the following areas:

– Medicine. Scientists create individual cells of the human body using 3D printers and test new drugs on them. In addition, there are known cases of 3D-printed dentures, other types of anatomical prostheses, as well as joints, artificial kidneys, liver, trachea, skin cells, blood vessels and even nerve tissue (!);

– Cinema (objects printed for the film industry sometimes look much more realistic than computer graphics and cost less than real scenery (cars, interior elements, copies of antique or futuristic furniture and jewelry, etc.);

– Architecture. Even today, architects are ready to use a 3D printer to build fantastic buildings out of sand and a special binder, not only on earth, but also on other planets in our solar system;

– Advertising and marketing. It is impossible to imagine this field without 3D printing. Real product prototypes are created quickly and are inexpensive. Previously, such work was done manually, which took much more time, now, thanks to the transfer of the design into electronic form, the process of creating a product from scratch turns out to be less expensive.

Thanks to 3D printing, experts in the field can maximize market research by arming themselves with ready-made prototype samples of the product. An important point is the fact that designers can assess the functionality and appearance of the product at the design stage, and therefore quickly make the necessary adjustments to the design concept.

3D printing technologies will come in handy when needed:

• Prototyping the form of a new product that needs to be visually presented and approved by the Customer (for example, it can be an original case for IPhone, as well as a prototype of a building, packaging or vehicle);

• Creation of mechanism parts: in this case 3D printing will help to replace lost or broken parts – to avoid the high costs of buying a new product or a set of parts. It could be a part of a broken toy or a car’s alloy wheel cover lost on the road. So, with a 3D printer, we can scan and print for you a part of any complexity;

• Printing a prototype to create silicone molds (or molds made of other materials) that will be used to cast a small batch of identical products (small batch production).

• Printing of decorative items (household items, vases, figures of fairy-tale characters, prefabricated (including decorative) products, etc.).

In addition to the above-described, professional applications of 3D printing, there are a number of areas for everyday use of the technology. So, with a 3D printer, you can:

• Create and print a 3D model of your favorite character;

• Print educational mockups for educational or any other institution (from tank models, to human organ prototypes);

• Design jewelry or costume jewelry (as well as their prototypes);

• Obtain other products and molds for small batch production.

How a 3D printer works

3D printing technology, in most cases, is based on layer-by-layer build-up of polymers. However, these are by no means all the ways to 3D print. There is also:

1. Laser sintering of powders. The powder itself is delivered to the printer via a rotating shaft and is evenly distributed over the entire printing surface. The 3D printer removes the excess material but uses it again later to apply the next layer. It should be noted that the high accuracy of this method is ensured by the immobility of the part. But there is one significant disadvantage of this method – low quality (roughness) of the object surface, which requires mandatory finalization.
2. Стереолитография. This principle of operation is similar to the previous one, but has a number of differences. First, it is one of the most commonly used principles of 3D printer operation. Secondly, it is based on the action of a laser beam on the photopolymer resin. At the points of contact, the compound hardens, and then another layer of photopolymer is added and the process is repeated. The 3D printer removes the excess compound and then reuses it.
3. Powder bonding. This principle of operation is as simple as possible – starch-cellulose powder, and with it a water-based adhesive, are fed to the printer head. The glue binds the powder and forms the contours of the model, and to give the piece strength, its voids are filled with liquid wax.
4. Inkjet modeling (in this case, the printer uses two types of materials – support and modeling. Wax is most often used as a support material, but the list of modeling materials is quite long. Basically, these are materials close in their properties and features to structural thermoplastics.

The process itself consists of simultaneous application of support and modeling material, followed by photopolymerization and then mechanical alignment. This method allows you to create both hard products and soft products. In the second case, there is a similarity of the product material to rubber.

Advantages of 3D printing

– Speed (manually creating a real model, depending on the complexity of the work, can take up to one month or more. 3D printing technology will allow you to do it in one day);

– Price (pricing policy directly depends on the complexity of the model, as well as the material used. It is safe to say that 3D printing will cost an order of magnitude cheaper than manual or automatic production of 3D models);

– Functionality (often an object produced by a 3D printer can be used immediately after manufacturing, but don’t forget that with a 3D printer you can stream small-scale production).

Summarizing the advantages of using a 3D printer, it should be noted that due to the optimal price-quality ratio, all the shortcomings of the model, identified at the stage of its prototyping, can be quickly and with little cost can be eliminated, as well as create several variations of prototypes of the same product.

If you need 3D printing, the international branding agency KOLORO will provide you with such service in the highest quality, quickly and inexpensively! At the same time, our price for 3D printing will start from 4 hryvnia per 1 cm. cubic volume. We always use an individual approach to the client, which means that the price of the work will be calculated depending on the complexity of the product and other details of cooperation agreed with you.

Note, if others have a cheaper price than ours, they may simply be using lower quality materials for printing, or printing their items on non-professional equipment.

For individual calculation of the cost of 3D printing of your product you need to send us a 3D image of the graphical model in STL format (this format is widely used for rapid protipirovannya) or order us to create a 3d-model, in programs such as 3DEngineering, SolidWorks, 3DStudioMax or others. We possess high technology in the field of 3D printing, which helps us to successfully perform work of any given complexity.