3D PRINTING

By - AADIL KAKAR

INTRODUCTION

3-D printing is a manufacturing process that builds layers to create a three-dimensional solid
object from a digital model. To print a 3-D object, the manufacturer uses a computer-aided
design (CAD) program to create a digital model that gets sliced into very thin cross-sections
called layers. During the print process, the 3-D printer starts at the bottom of the design and
builds up successive layers of material until the object is finished. In the past, the cost of 3-D
printing was expensive and the technology was only used by large corporations, but the
development of desktop 3-D printers has made the technology more accessible to small and
mid-sized businesses and home users. Today, 3-D printers are used to create anything from a
new toy or motorcycle part to manufacturing prototypes for testing purposes. Before 3-D
printers existed, creating a prototype was time-consuming and expensive, requiring skilled
craftsmen and specific machinery. Instead of sending modelling instructions to a production
company, advances in 3-D printing have allowed businesses to insource prototype production
on a regular basis.

SLICING: FROM 3D MODEL TO 3D PRINTER

Slicing is dividing a 3D model into hundreds or thousands of horizontal layers and is done in
slicing software. Some 3D printers have a built-in slicer and let you feed the raw .stl, .obj or
even CAD file. When your file is sliced, it’s ready to be fed to your 3D printer. This can be
done via USB, SD or internet. Your sliced 3D model is now ready to be 3D printed layer by
layer.

BENEFITS OF 3D PRINTING

1. SPEED

One of the biggest advantages of 3D printing technology is Rapid Prototyping. Rapid

prototyping is the ability to design, manufacture, and test a customized part in as little time as
possible. Also, if needed, the design can be modified without adversely affecting the speed of
the manufacturing process. Before 3D printing industry came to flourish, a prototype would
take weeks to manufacture. Every time a change was made, another few weeks of time were
added to the process. With shipping times figured in, fully developing a product from start to
finish could easily take a year. With 3D printing techniques, a business can design a part,
manufacture it in-house on a professional 3D printer, and test it, all within a few days (and
sometimes even less). For small businesses or even individuals, this difference is significant.
The freedom and creativity enabled by 3D printing means that almost anything can be created
without the need for warehouses full of expensive machinery. There are no long lead times
typically associated with having to outsource complex manufacturing projects. It means
freedom from the constraints of minimum orders, that parts and products can be created and
customized with ease. For small production runs and prototyping, 3D printing is the best
option as far as speed is concerned.

2. COST

For small production runs and applications, 3D printing is the most cost-effective
manufacturing process. Traditional prototyping methods like CNC machining and injection
moulding require a large number of expensive machines plus they have much higher labour
costs as they require experienced machine operators and technicians to run them. This
contrasts with 3D printing process, where only 1 or 2 machines and fewer operators are
needed (depending on the system) to manufacture a part. There is far less waste material
because the part is built from the ground up, not carved out of a solid block as it is in
subtractive manufacturing and usually does not require additional tooling.

3. FLEXIBILITY

Another big advantage of 3D printing is that any given printer can create almost anything that
fits within its build volume.With traditional manufacturing processes, each new part or
change in part design, requires a new tool, mold, die, or jig to be manufactured to create the
new part. In 3D printing, the design is fed into slicer software, needed supports added, and
then printed with little or no change at all in the physical machinery or equipment. 3D
printing allows the creation and manufacture of geometries impossible for traditional
methods to produce, either as a single part, or at all. Such geometries include hollow cavities
within solid parts and parts within parts. 3D printing, in contrast to traditional methods,
allows the inclusion of multiple materials into a single object, enabling an array of colours,
textures, and mechanical properties to be mixed and matched. 3D printing allows any user,
even those with limited CAD experience, to edit designs however they like, creating unique,
customized new parts. This also means any given design can be manufactured in a wide range
of different materials.

4. COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE
Because of the speed and lower costs of 3D printing, product life cycles are reduced.
Businesses can improve and enhance a product allowing them to deliver better products in a
shorter amount of time. 3D printing allows the physical demonstration of a new product to
customers and investors instead of leaving it to their imaginations, therefore reducing the risk
of information being misunderstood or lost during communication. It also allows for cost-
effective market testing, obtaining feedback from potential customers and investors on a
tangible product, without the risk of large upfront expenditures for prototyping.

5. TANGIBLE DESIGN AND PRODUCT TESTING

As previously described in competitive advantages, seeing a product on a screen cannot

compare with actually touching and feeling a prototype. A physical prototype can be tested
and if flaws are found, the CAD file can be modified and a new version printed out by the
next day.

6. QUALITY

Traditional manufacturing methods can result in poor designs therefore poor quality
prototypes. Imagine baking a cake, where all the ingredients are combined and mixed
together, then placed in the oven to bake. If it happens the elements were not mixed well, the
cake would have problems like air bubbles or fail to bake thoroughly. The same can occur
with subtractive or injection methods; quality is not always assured. The nature of 3D
printing allows the step-by-step assembly of the part or product, which guarantees
enhancement of the design and better quality parts/products.

7. CONSISTENCY

As mentioned above relative to quality, traditional manufacturing processes can result in a

percentage of a batch of parts being defective or inconsistent in quality compared to the rest
of the parts. In 3D printing, the parts are printed in succession. Each successive individual
part can be monitored, allowing errors to be caught in real time, reducing the overall number
of failed parts and wasted materials while increasing consistent quality of the parts produced.

8. RISK REDUCTION

Because of the previously mentioned advantages of Quality and Consistency, 3D printing

allows a business to mitigate its risks in manufacturing. 3D printing technology allows
 product designers to verify product prototypes before starting out on substantial
manufacturing investments that can be potentially disastrous.

9. ACCESSIBILITY

3D printing systems are much more accessible and can be used by a much wider range of
people than traditional manufacturing setups. In comparison to the enormous expense
involved with setting up traditional manufacturing systems, a 3D printing setup costs much
less. Also, 3D printing is almost completely automated, requiring little to no additional
personnel to run, supervise, and maintain the machine, making it much more accessible than
other manufacturing systems by a good margin.

10. SUSTAINABILITY

With 3D printing, fewer parts need outsourcing for manufacturing. This equals less
environmental impact because fewer things are being shipped across the globe and there is no
need to operate and maintain an energy-consuming factory. 3D printing creates a lot less
waste material for a single part plus materials used in 3D printing generally are recyclable.
The main advantages of 3D printing are realized in its Speed, Flexibility, and Cost benefits.
For small production runs, prototyping, small business, and educational use, 3D printing is
vastly superior to other industrial methods.

Applications of 3D Printing

3D printing encompasses many forms of technologies and materials as 3D printing is being

used in almost all industries you could think of. It’s important to see it as a cluster of diverse
industries with a myriad of different applications.A few examples:

 clear aligners / braces in dentistry

 eyewear
 architectural scale models & maquette
 prosthetics
 movie props
 design (lamps, furniture, etc.)
 reconstructing fossils in paleontology
 replicating ancient artifacts in archaeology
 reconstructing bones and body parts in forensic pathology
 reconstructing heavily damaged evidence retrieved from a crime scene
RAPID PROTOTYPING AN RAPID MANUFACTUURING

Companies have used 3D printers in their design process to create prototypes since the late
seventies. Using 3D printers for these purposes is called rapid prototyping.

Why use 3D Printers for Rapid Prototyping?

In short: it’s fast and relatively cheap. From idea, to 3D model to holding a prototype in your
hands is a matter of days instead of weeks. Iterations are easier and cheaper to make and you
don’t need expensive moulds or tools. Besides rapid prototyping, 3D printing is also used
for rapid manufacturing. Rapid manufacturing is a new method of manufacturing where
businesses use 3D printers for short run / small batch custom manufacturing.

Automotive
Car manufacturers have been utilizing 3D printing for a long time. Automotive companies are
printing spare parts, tools, jigs and fixtures but also end-use parts. 3D printing has enabled
on-demand manufacturing which has lead to lower stock levels and has shortened design and
production cycles. Automotive enthusiasts all over the world are using 3D printed parts to
restore old cars. One such example is when Australian engineers printed parts to be delayed
back to c-type in life. In doing so, they had to print parts that were out of production for
decades.

Aviation
The aviation industry uses 3D printing in many different ways. The following example marks
a significant 3D printing manufacturing milestone: GE Aviation has 3D printed 30,000
Cobalt-chrome fuel nozzles for its LEAP aircraft engines. They achieved that milestone in
October of 2018, and considering that they produce 600 per week on forty 3D printers, it’s
likely much higher than that now. Around twenty individual parts that previously had to be
welded together were consolidated into one 3D printed component that weighs 25% less and
is five times stronger. The LEAP engine is the best selling engine in the aviation sector due to
its high level of efficiency and GE saves $3 million per aircraft by 3D printing the fuel
nozzles, so this single 3D printed part generates hundreds of millions of dollars of financial
benefit. GE’s fuel nozzles also made their way into the Boeing 787 Dreamliner, but it’s not
the only 3D printed part in the 787. The 33-centimeter-long structural fittings that hold the aft
kitchen galley to the airframe are 3D printed by a company called Norsk Titanium. Norsk
chose to specialize in titanium because it has a very high strength-to-weight ratio and is rather
expensive, meaning the reduction in waste enabled by 3D printing has a more significant
financial impact than compared to cheaper metals where the costs of material waste are easier
to absorb. Rather than sintering metal powder with a laser like more metal 3D printers the
Norsk Merke 4 uses a plasma arc to melt a metal wire in a process called Rapid Plasma
Deposition (a form of Direct Energy Deposition ) that can deposit up to 10kg of titanium per
hour. A 2kg titanium part would generally require a 30kg block of titanium to machine it
from, generating 28kg of waste, but 3D printing the same part requires only 6kg of titanium
wire. Boeing has been using 3D printed parts in their airplanes for a long time. Back in 2015
it was estimated that Boeing had more than 20,000 3D printed parts implemented in their
airplanes.

Construction

Is it possible to print a building? – yes it is. 3D printing is what many believe the future of
construction. It’s already possible to print walls, doors, floors and even complete houses.

Contour Crafting

Behrokh Khoshnevis, pioneer of printing with concrete (also known as Contour Crafting),
developed a method which leverages the power of additive manufacturing in construction.
Contour Crafting essentially uses a robotic device to automate the construction of large
structures such as homes. This device prints walls layer-by-layer by extruding concrete. The
walls are smoothed as they are built, thanks to a robotic trowel.

Consumer Products

When we first started blogging about 3D printing back in 2011, 3D printing wasn’t ready to
be used as a production method for larger volumes. Nowadays there are numerous examples
of end-use consumer products with 3D printed parts in it.

Eyewear

The market of 3D printed eyewear is forecasted to reach $3.4 billion by 2028. A rapidly
increasing section is that of end-use frames. 3D printing is a particularly suitable production
method for eyewear frames because the measurements of an individual are easy to process in
the end product. But did you know it’s also possible to 3D print lenses? Traditional glass
lenses don’t start out thin and light; they’re cut from a much larger block of material called a
blank, about 80% of which goes to waste. When we consider how many people wear glasses
and how often they need to get a new pair, 80% of those numbers is a lot of waste. On top of
that, labs have to keep huge inventories of blanks to meet the custom vision needs of their
clients. Finally, however, 3D printing technology has advanced enough to provide high-
quality, custom ophthalmic lenses, doing away with the waste and inventory costs of the past.
The Luxexcel Vision Engine 3D printer uses a UV-curable acrylate monomer to print two
pairs of lenses per hour that require no polishing or post-processing of any kind. The focal
areas can also be completely customized so that a certain area of the lens can provide better
clarity at a distance while a different area of the lens provides better vision up close.

Jewellery

There are two ways of creating jewellery via 3D printing. Directly print an object via Metal
Powder Bed Fusion or you can print a tool (cast or mould) to create the end product via
casting.

Healthcare

It’s not uncommon these days to see headlines about 3D printed implants. Often, those cases
are experimental, which can make it seem like 3D printing is still a fringe technology in the
medical and healthcare sectors, but that’s not the case. Over the last decade, more than
100,000 hip replacements have been 3D printed on just Arcam (now a part of GE Additive)
machines; more have been printed on other systems. The Delta-TT Cup designed by Dr.
Guido Grappiolo and LimaCorporate is made of Trabecular Titanium, which is characterized
by a regular, three-dimensional, hexagonal cell structure that imitates trabecular bone
morphology. The trabecular structure increases the biocompatibility of the titanium by
encouraging bone growth into the implant. Some of the first Delta-TT implants are still
running strong over a decade later. Another 3D printed healthcare device that does a good job
of being undetectable is the hearing aid. Nearly every hearing aid in the last 17 years has been
3D printed thanks to a collaboration between Materialise and Phonak, a hearing aid
manufacturer. They developed Rapid Shell Modelling (RSM) in 2001. Prior to RSM, making
one hearing aid required nine laborious steps involving hand sculpting and mould making,
and the results were often ill-fitting. With RSM, a technician uses silicone to take an
impression of the ear canal, that impression is 3D scanned, and after some minor tweaking
the model is 3D printed with an SLA (stereolithography) vat photopolymerization machine.
The electronics are added and then it’s shipped to the user. Using this process, hundreds of
thousands of hearing aids are 3D printed each year, each one customized just for its user.
RSM delivers a better fit while reducing cost and requiring significantly less time to fabricate
than the old manual way of making hearing aids.

Dental

A very similar process to RSM is also taking over in the dental industry, where molds for
clear aligners like are possibly the most 3D printed objects in the world. Currently, the molds
are 3D printed on SLA and MJF printers, but new materials and printing technologies are
enabling the direct 3D printing of aligners, removing the mold step.Crowns and dentures are
already directly 3D printed, along with surgical guides. EnvisionTec is the most popular
brand of 3D printers among dental technicians, but Stratasys and Carbon also cater to the
industry with dental resins.

Bio-printing

As of the early two-thousands 3D printing technology has been studied by biotech firms and
academia for possible use in tissue engineering applications where organs and body parts are
built using inkjet techniques. Layers of living cells are deposited onto a gel medium and
slowly built up to form three dimensional structures. We refer to this field of research with
the term: bio-printing.

Aerospace

If you want to see 3D printing applied in the wildest ways imaginable, look no further than
the aerospace industry. There is a vast amount of both real-life examples as well as futuristic
concepts worth mentioning. For instance UK start-up Orbex whom have built the world’s
largest 3D printed rocket engine. The engine is unique in that it’s the first one printed entirely
as a single piece without any joins. In regards to futuristic concepts, researchers at the
University of Ottawa presented the idea of self-replicating 3D printers that process lunar soil.

These printers, while still a concept, could lead to exponentially decreasing the amount of
materials and equipment necessary for a lunar mission.

Food
Additive manufacturing invaded the food industry long time ago. Restaurants like Food Ink
and Melisse use this as a unique selling point to attract customers from across the world.

Medical
It is recognized that medical uses for 3D printing, both actual and potential, will bring
revolutionary changes [31, 32]. They can be organized into several broad categories,
including: creation of customized prosthetics, implants, and anatomical models, tissue and
organ fabrication; manufacturing of specialty surgical instruments, pharmaceutical research
regarding drug fabrication, dosage forms, delivery, and discovery [33] as well as
manufacturing medical devices. Benefits provided by application of 3D printing in medicine
include not only the customization and personalization of medical products, drugs, and
equipment, but also cost-effectiveness, increased productivity, the democratization of design
and manufacturing, and enhanced collaboration. 3D printed organs for transplantations are
still beyond reach. A Chinese researcher at Hangzhou Dianzi University, Xu Mingen,
developer of the “Regenovo” bioprinter, predicted that fully functional printed organs may be
possible within the next 10 to 20 years.

Virtual surgical planning

Imaging techniques are important in medical practice. Introducing 3DP brings an essential
improvement in surgical planning. Computed tomography (CT) and/or MRI images lead to a
detailed picture of internal organs and anatomical parts. Their 3D printed replicas reproduce
the size, weight and texture of organs, allowing surgeons to rehearse complicated procedures
on 3D models. The Japanese company Fasotec, bought by Stratasys, developed a Biotexture
Wet Model mimicking such organs as lungs that allows surgeons and students to practice the
operations to be carried out. Today planning surgery with the help of 3D printed models is a
widely used procedure. To name but a few, it has assisted full face transplants [98, 99], the
first adult-to-child kidney transplant, removal of a kidney [102] or liver tumor [103] in
hospitals , and ace tabular reconstructive surgery.

ATM skimmer

We often write about the amazing, charming, ridiculous things that 3D printers makes
possible: see the fabbed hermit crab shells, the space shuttle made of pureed scallops and
cheese, the “pirated” Penrose Triangle. But machines that can make any physical object using
only resin powder can also be turned to more nefarious ends. Security blogger Brain Krebs
reports that someone has deployed at least one impressively sophisticated ATM skimmer in
LA that appears to have been 3D printed. The device fits over the front of a bona fide Chase
ATM. Just looking at these babies sends a chill down your spine—this person or persons
knew what they were doing. Here’s more from Krebs: It is an all-in-one skimmer designed to
fit over the card acceptance slot and to record the data from the magnetic stripe of any card
dipped into the reader. The fraud device is shown sideways in this picture; attached to an
actual ATM, it would appear rotated 90 degrees to the right, so that the word “CHASE” is
pointing down….On the bottom of the fake card acceptance slot is a tiny hole for a built-in
spy camera that is connected to a battery. The spy camera turns on when a card is dipped into
the skimmer’s card acceptance slot, and is angled to record customer PINs. Looking at the
backside of the device shows the true geek factor of this ATM skimmer. The fraudster who
built it appears to have cannibalized parts from a video camera or perhaps a smartphone
(possibly to enable the transmission of PIN entry video and stolen card data to the fraudster
wirelessly via SMS or Bluetooth). It’s too bad so much of the skimmer is obscured by yellow
plastic. I’d welcome any feedback from readers who can easily identify these parts based on
the limited information here.

Conclusion

It is generally accepted that 3D printing will be a revolutionary force in manufacturing,

whether positive or negative. Despite concerns over counterfeiting, many companies are
already using the technology to repeatedly produce intricate components, for example in
automotive and aerospace manufacturing. As 3D printers become more affordable, they will
inevitably be used for local, small scale manufacturing, largely eliminating supply chains for
many types of product. Consumer units for home use will even become feasible, allowing end
users to simply download a design for the product they require and print it out. There will be
major challenges for the conventional manufacturing industry to adapt to these changes. The
opportunities for technology and engineering are clearly huge, however, and the creative
possibilities in product design and printing material formulation are nearly endless.