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1984 3d printer
It's Older Than You Think [Updated]
Published Date
Author Drew Turney- 3D printing has existed in concept since 1945 and in practice—however primitive—since 1971, proposing a faster and more efficient method of making things.
- Concurrent development of 3D-printing technology down to consumer use and up to enterprise use has realized the benefits of 3D printing in construction, architecture, design, manufacturing, and other industries.
- Continuing advancements in additive manufacturing technology and 3D-printable materials, especially new metal alloys, will contribute to further growth.
- In the future, look for new 3D-printing applications in the aerospace, electronics, medical, energy, and automotive industries.
What technology is 80 years old in theory, 40 years old in practice, and looks brand new? Believe it or not, it’s 3D printing.
Although the craze for desktop 3D printers began around 2010, when companies like MakerBot made investors and the media salivate, those in manufacturing know that the process—applying material onto a substrate to build up an object from a digital 3D design—goes back much further.
The first patent for a process called a Liquid Metal Recorder dates to the 1970s, but the idea is much older. In 1945, a prescient short story by Murray Leinster called “Things Pass By” describes the process of feeding “magnetronic plastics—the stuff they make houses and ships of nowadays—into this moving arm. It makes drawings in the air following drawings it scans with photo-cells. But plastic comes out of the end of the drawing arm and hardens as it comes.” What in Leinster’s day was science fiction soon became a reality.
Layers of Innovation: A 3D-Printing Timeline
1971–1999: The First 3D Printer Emerges
Inkjet technology was invented by the Teletype Corporation in the 1960s, a method of “pulling” a drop of material from a nozzle using electronics.
It resulted in a device capable of printing up to 120 characters per second and ultimately paved the way for consumer desktop printing.
Teletype later experimented with melted wax as described in a 1971 patent belonging to Johannes F. Gottwald, whose idea was to output an object made of liquified metal that solidified into a shape predetermined by the inkjet’s movement upon each new layer. This device was the Liquid Metal Recorder, which is the basis of rapid prototyping and posited that “printing” could move beyond ink.
Material Extrusion ProcessThose were the baby steps into a territory called the material extrusion process, where thermoplastic is fed into a heated nozzle and laid upon an object one “slice” at a time in sequence—the same technique used in consumer desktop 3D printers. It’s speedy and cheap, but the materials (essentially rubbery plastic) aren’t good for much beyond model R2-D2s and racing cars.
Plans to print objects using liquified metal date to the 1970s, but practical metal additive manufacturing is much more recent—and will impact many more industries as new 3D-printable alloys become available.
In 1980, Dr. Hideo Kodama, a lawyer working for a public research institute in the city of Nagoya, Japan, described two methods for Gottwald’s vision using thermoset polymer—a special plastic that hardens in response to light—instead of metal. His research was published in several papers and resulted in his own November 1981 patent, but a complete lack of interest meant the project went nowhere.
Regardless, the seed was sown. Electronics and defense manufacturer Raytheon filed a patent in 1982 to use powdered metal to add layers to an object. In 1984, entrepreneur Bill Masters filed a patent for a process called Computer Automated Manufacturing Process and System, which mentioned the term 3D printing for the first time. Another 1984 patent in France described additive manufacturing using stereolithography, but like Kodama’s work, it was disregarded as having no commercial appeal.
3D Systems Corporation’s SLA-1After all these starts, inventor Chuck Hull was the first person to actually build a 3D printer.
Based on his patent for curing photopolymers using radiation, particles, a chemical reaction, or lasers, his design sent the spatial data from a digital file to the extruder of a 3D printer to build up the object one layer at a time.
Hull’s company, 3D Systems Corporation, released the world’s first stereolithographic apparatus (SLA) machine, the SLA-1, in 1987. This machine made it possible to fabricate complex parts, layer by layer, in a fraction of the time it would normally take. Hull went on to file more than 60 patents around the technology, becoming the godfather of the rapid prototyping movement and inventing the STL file format that’s still in use today.
During this era, 3D printing was an emerging technology, and materials science wasn’t what it is today. If the product was made of popular polymers, they tended to warp as it set.
At the time, the machines also cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, so 3D printing devices were installed only in heavy manufacturing plants—far out of the reach of consumers.
Amid widespread worries that the Y2K bug would shut down computer systems and cause digital Armageddon, 3D printing showed great potential for many industries.
During this period, bioengineering was also making important advances. Scientists at Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine in Winston-Salem, NC, printed the building blocks of a human urinary bladder using additive manufacturing and coating the organ with cells from the patient so the body was unlikely to reject the 3D-printed bladder.
The next decade saw many advances in medical 3D printing as scientists, technologists and doctors built a miniature kidney, a complex prosthetic leg, and the first bioengineered blood vessels made using donated human cells.
But the entire movement—especially the drive toward consumer use—received a big boost from the open-source paradigm sweeping the information and communications technology (ICT) sector. In 2005, Adrian Bowyer’s RepRap Project launched an open-source initiative to create a 3D printer that could build itself—or at least print most of its own parts.
The 1.0 Darwin machine was the first practical application of RepRap’s philosophy, and suddenly anyone had the power to create whatever they could dream up. Launched around the same time, Kickstarter gave home 3D printing another huge boost as crowdfunded projects sprung up everywhere. Manufacturing was democratizing fast.
MakerBot 3D PrinterCommercial 3D printing finally came to the desktop in 2006 from Objet (now Stratasys), which let users send designs to its device in order to print them from multiple materials with different properties.
Marketplaces and virtual swap meets for trading, sharing, and acquiring designs sprung up everywhere, driving a huge groundswell of interest. When MakerBot arrived in 2009 with open-source DIY kits to design and print just about anything, it made co-founder Bre Pettis into a superstar and gave 3D printing the same cachet as past emerging technologies like social media, e-commerce, and even the Web itself.
The first 3D printers cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Today, desktop printers like this MakerBot Replicator+ cost less than $2,000. Courtesy of MakerBot.2011–Present Day: 3D Printing in Its PrimeToday, additive manufacturing is a mature technology. The consumer interest and robustness of industrial platforms grew throughout the 2010s, as the (often hysterical) MakerBot hype settled down and the industry found a groove. Some think additive will replace traditional CNC and milling manufacturing in the future, and a 2021 Lux Research report predicts that 3D printing will be worth $51 billion by 2030.
The plastic desk toys have been cleared away, leaving the real-world benefits 3D printing offers: everything from printing food to applying multiple materials in the same extrusion process, making the process faster and cheaper.
The range of materials available for 3D printing has also grown exponentially, from bioprinting human tissue and the beginnings of organs tailor-made to patients to crafting products from silver or gold.
The applications are also as varied as inventors’ and engineers’ imaginations. Scientists at the University of Southampton flew the world’s first 3D-printed unmanned aircraft; the makers of a 3D-printed car reached up to 200 mpg with a hybrid gas/electric engine; and a start-up specializing in building ecological living structures came up with a robot-made habitat suitable for living on Mars.
3D printing is being used to build emergency shelter in disaster areas and affordable housing in the developing world. And smart robotics, micromanufacturing, and articulated limb design were combined to to make self-powered prosthetics that give feedback to the brain.
A lot of high-end 3D printing in manufacturing for large structures is done using powder-bed fusion, where various materials can be used in powdered form and fused together using lasers or heat. This is the main process used for metal parts, but it’s expensive and needs very particular infrastructure, making it mainly been feasible for the heavy manufacturing sector.
Industries That Use 3D PrintingNevertheless, additive manufacturing has found a home in many industries. The amount of things from your daily life with some 3D-printed component may surprise you.
3D Printing in ConstructionConstruction is a massive, entrenched field with a legacy of wasteful and dangerous practices, responsible for almost 40% of greenhouse gas emissions. 3D printing could upend it with cleaner methods of creating cement-based products like walls and metal components like rebar—and climate change makes these changes even more crucial.
But speed is another compelling reason to adopt 3D printing.
In 2016, a Chinese company 3D printed an entire two-story house in 45 days. That same year, Apis Cor 3D printed the structure of a 400-square-foot house in only 24 hours. Additive technologies can also be deployed in precarious places like mine sites or disaster areas quickly and cheaply; research is ongoing to use materials found onsite where printers are located instead of using more fuel and smoke-belching trucks to ship in materials.
The biggest benefits of 3D printing to architecture seem obvious: designs already exist with every conceivable detail in digital form, so when you want to impress clients or investors, simply click a button and have a gorgeous model on your boardroom table just hours later. Want to change a beam, reorient a window, or add another story? Redo your drawings, rinse, and repeat.
When prototypes have to be made in or near the same factories where final production kicks into gear, it adds precious time to the design and review phase of product development if the designer and manufacturer are located far apart.
With access to 3D printing, it doesn’t matter how far-flung the factory is; a 3D printer in your office or garage can churn out as many prototypes as you need affordably and quickly, no matter how many design tweaks you have to make.
3D printing has the potential to make manufacturing viable in any region or economic climate, rather than only in the manufacturing hubs of the past 30–40 years.
A lot of manufacturing workflows already have the means to retool to additive processes. And as the product-design timeline is compressed further thanks to advances such as generative design and the easier transport and repurposing of design files, prototyping and production will happen faster, all at the speed of digital.
Early consumer 3D printing also promised to help reduce waste through a little less built-in obsolescence. If the broken part in an old vacuum cleaner isn’t in production anymore, but the design file for it still exists on the manufacturer’s website, you only have to send it to your desktop device and watch a quick YouTube video to learn how to install it.
What Is the Future of 3D Printing?According to Statista, the global additive manufacturing market is expected to grow 17% annually through 2023, as the applications for the technology increases and metal additive becomes more and more viable. And the market for additive manufacturing products and services is expected to almost triple between 2020 and 2026.
As 3D printing has matured, it has helped meets needs in the medical industry for things such as on-demand medical samples, personalized prosthetics, and even bioengineered organ printing.Big Growth in the Aerospace, Electronics, and Medical IndustriesIndustries such as manufacturing, architecture, and product design are surely reaping the benefits of 3D printing, but some of the greatest growth is expected in the electronics, aerospace, and medical industries.
Todd Spurgeon, additive manufacturing project engineer for America Makes, says the electronics industry will see things like custom heat sinks for high-end products, and the aerospace industry will see a larger availability of 3D-printed components that will make their way from higher-end military applications to general aviation. In the medical industry, as more materials are evaluated for medical applications and insurance companies more broadly recognize additive manufacturing, personalized care will become the norm.
“Gone may be the days of the one-size-fits-most expensive prosthetic,” Spurgeon says. “Soon, personalized prosthetics, custom-fit to the user, are expected to be within the reach of the typical American household—even for growing children.”
New Applications and New 3D-Printable MaterialsBeyond the existing technologies, there is much more on the horizon for additive manufacturing. According to Spurgeon, interesting work is being done in the direct-ink-writing and dense paste material extrusion communities.
For example, research groups are exploring mixing cured photopolymers with advanced material systems such as ceramics and thermosets, which can ultimately be used for things like printed circuits, lower-cost heat exchangers, and nonbulk ceramics.
“Improvements in this domain could result in a larger insertion of additive manufacturing into high-end applications such as aerospace and automotive, as well as large production processes such as the desalinization of water,” Spurgeon says. Even more opportunities surface when you consider this technology in conjunction with other additive-manufacturing modalities, such as printed circuits integrated into the structure of prosthetics or new form factors for batteries.
The list of 3D-printable materials is growing, as well. “Refractory super alloys will enable innovations in the energy, aerospace, and defence sectors,” Spurgeon says. “More durable polymers are being developed today that are likely to meet flame, smoke, and toxicity testing required by the FAA, which will result in sustainment costs reduction for relevant sectors.
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With new research and developments in additive manufacturing on the rise, the future remains bright for 3D printing—so bright that it’s time to don your new 3D-printed shades.
This article has been updated. It was originally published in September 2014. Dana Goldberg contributed to this article.
About the Author
After growing up knowing he wanted to change the world, Drew Turney realized it was easier to write about other people changing it instead. He writes about technology, cinema, science, books, and more.
Content by Drew Turney
From the 80s to Today
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Contents:
- Introduction
- The 1980s: Birth of the main 3D Printing Techniques
- The 1990s: Emergence of the Main 3D Printers Manufacturers & CAD tools
- The 2000s: 3D Printing Gains Media Visibility
- The 2010s: Years of Visibility, Innovation and Hopes for 3D Printing
- What about now, and what about the future?
Introduction
3D printing is not as new as you may think! Actually, FDM (Fused Deposition Modeling) technology became quite popular and impressive for the general public around 2009 because of its media coverage.
At some point, a lot of people actually thought that FDM was the only additive manufacturing technology. But FDM is not even the first 3D printing technology developed, and 3D printing actually started in the 1980s.
Here is a quick 3D printing timeline from the 1980s to today. The history of 3D printing is fascinating. The first machines, the great expectations, and the many 3D printing applications that are now flourishing. Let’s take a look back at the 3D printing history.
The 1980s: Birth of the main 3D Printing Techniques
The concept of 3D printing has been imagined back in the 1970’s, but the first experiments are dated from 1981. The first 3D printing attempts are granted to Dr Kodama for his development of a rapid prototyping technique. He was the first to describe a layer by layer approach for manufacturing, creating an ancestor for SLA (or Stereolithography): a photosensitive resin was polymerized by an UV light. Unfortunately, he did not file the patent requirement before the deadline.
A few years later, a French team of engineers, Alain Le Méhauté, Olivier de Witte and Jean-Claude André, was interested by the stereolithography but abandoned due to a lack of business perspective. This 3D printing attempt was also using a stereolithography process.
If you want more information about these first experiences, check out our interview of Jean-Claude André. At the same time, Charles Hull was also interested in the technology and submitted a first patent for stereolithography (SLA) in 1986. He founded the 3D Systems Corporation and in 1988, released the SLA-1, their first commercial product.
If SLA was the first 3D printing technology developed, what about SLS (Selective Laser Sintering) and FDM (Fused Deposition Modeling) back then?
In 1988, at the University of Texas, Carl Deckard brought a patent for the SLS technology, another 3D printing technique in which powder grains are fused together locally by a laser.
In the meantime, Scott Crump, a co-founder of Stratasys Inc.
filed a patent for Fused Deposition Modelling (FDM). In less than ten years, the three main technologies of 3D printing were patented and 3D printing was born!
To resume:
1980: First patent by japanese Dr Kodama Rapid prototyping
1984: Stereolithography by French engineers then abandoned
1986: Stereolithography taken up by Charles Hull
1988: First SLA-1 machine
1988: First SLS machine by DTM Inc then buy by 3D system
The SLA 1The 1990s: Emergence of the Main 3D Printers Manufacturers & CAD tools
Now that the basics were established, the evolution of additive manufacturing is pretty fast. The main 3D printers manufacturers are emerging, new technologies are perfected, and 3D modeling tools start to be developed as well, bringing additive manufacturing to the next level.
In Europe, EOS GmbH was founded and created the first EOS “Stereos” system for industrial prototyping and production applications of 3D printing.
Its industrial quality is today recognized worldwide in SLS technology (Selective Laser Sintering technology) for plastics and metals.
In 1992, the Fused Deposition Modeling patent was issued to Stratasys, which developed many 3D printers for both professionals and individuals. From 1993 to 1999, the main actors of the 3D printing sector emerged with various techniques:
ZCorp and binder jetting: Based on MIT’s inkjet printing technology, they created the Z402, which produced models using starch- and plaster‐based powder materials and a water‐based liquid binder
Arcam MCP technology and Selective Laser Melting.
At the same time, we can see that more and more new CAD tools, allowing to create 3D models, are becoming available and developed, with, for example, the creation of Sanders Prototype (now known as Solidscape), one of the first actors to develop specific tools for additive manufacturing.
Charles Hull was awarded the European Inventor Award in the Non-European countries category, by the European Patent Office Price in 2014.
To resume:
1990: First EOS Stereos system
1992: FDM patent to Stratasys
1993: Solidscape was founded
1995: Z Corporation obtained an exclusive license from the MIT
1999: Engineered organs bring new advances to medicine
Charles Hull was awarded the European Inventor Award in the Non-European countries category, by the European Patent Office Price in 2014.The 2000s: 3D Printing Gains Media Visibility
In 2000, the millennium saw the first 3D printed kidney, but we would have to wait 13 more years to see it transplanted into a patient. 3D printed kidneys are now working perfectly and researchers are experimenting on accelerated growth to transplant organs very rapidly.
2004 was the year of the initiating of the RepRap Project which consists of a self-replicating 3D printer. Yes, it is possible to 3D print a 3D printer. This open-source project led to the spreading of the FDM 3D desktop 3D printers, and of the popularity of the technology in the makers community.
In 2005, ZCorp launched the Spectrum Z510, the very first high-definition color 3D printer.
In 2008, 3D printing reached an even greater media presence thanks to another medical application: the first 3D printed prosthetic limb.
This amazing medical 3D printing project incorporated all parts of a biological limb, was printed ‘as is’, without the need for any later assembly. Nowadays, combined with 3D scanning, 3D printed medical prosthesis and orthosis are more and more cheaper and faster to get for the patient. Moreover, these prostheses are more and more optimized and adapted to the morphology of the patient. Additive manufacturing is bringing new opportunities regarding mass-customization.
http://www.ufunk.net/en/tech/exo-prosthetic-leg/2009 was the year in which the FDM patents fell into the public domain, opening the way to a wide wave of innovation in FDM 3D printers, a drop of the desktop 3D printers price, and consequently, since the technology was more accessible, an increased visibility.
2009 was also the year Sculpteo’s online 3D printing service was created, one of the pioneers of the now flourishing online 3D printing services, another step toward 3D printing accessibility!
To resume:
2000: a 3D printed working kidney is created
2000: MCP Technologies (an established vacuum casting OEM) introduced the SLM technology
2005: Z Corp. launched Spectrum Z510. It was the first high-definition color 3D Printer on the market.
2006: An open source project is initiated (Reprap)
2008: The first 3D printed prosthetic leg
2009: FDM patents in the public domain
2009: Sculpteo is created
The 2010s: Years of Visibility, Innovation and Hopes for 3D Printing
The recent years have been very important for 3D Printing. With the FDM patent expiration, the first years of the decade have become the years of 3D printing. Additive manufacturing is then becoming a real and affordable prototyping and production technique for businesses, opening new possibilities
In 2013, President Barack Obama mentioned 3D printing as a major issue for the future in his State of the Union speech, which made “3D printing” an absolute buzzword.
It is now very present in the general public’s mind, and in policy makers’ decisions. The technology is forever progressing, just as are the uses of this technology. More and more small and big companies take advantage of the low prototyping price that 3D printing offers, and have fully integrated it in their iteration, innovation and production processes.
In 2010, Urbee was the first 3D printed car. Its body was fully 3D printed using a very large 3D printer. Now, the 3D printed car is progressively becoming a reality, and additive manufacturing is taking more and more space in the automotive sector. Indeed, from the integration of 3D printing technology for the tooling process, to 3D printed car parts, additive manufacturing appears to be quite helpful on many levels, helping to go through brand new challenges.
credit: EDAG3D printing technology keeps on evolving, and progressing. New 3D printers are being issued regularly, they are more efficient, they print faster, and they give access to new 3D printing materials.
Technologies like CLIP (DLS) are being developed by Carbon, making the printing process even faster and more accurate than ever.
If you check the offers of our online 3D printing service, you will find a wide-range of materials from strong and accurate 3D printed resins such as Rigid Polyurethane, to 3D printed flexible plastic, and heat resistant 3D printed metals: everything is now printable, making it easy for companies to find materials adapted to their needs and products.
New 3D printing materials are being explored every day, from Daniel Kelly’s lab who’s 3D printing bone to the French startup XtreeE, who’s 3D printing concrete to revolutionize the construction industry! Indeed, regarding architecture application, 3D printing concrete is now a real thing, and families are starting to move into 3D printed houses. The first family to move into a 3D printed house actually did in 2018. The house is 1022 square feet, is perfectly habitable and took two days to print.
To resume:
2010: Urbee is the first 3D printed prototype car presented
2011: Cornell University began to build 3D food printer.
2012: The first prosthetic jaw is printed and implanted
2013: “3D printing” in Obama’s State of the Union speech
2015: Carbon 3D issues their revolutionary ultra-fast CLIP 3D printing machine
2016: Daniel Kelly’s lab announces being able to 3D print bone
2018: The first family moves into a 3D printed house
The 2020s: the arriving of more advanced Additive Manufacturing materials
Additive manufacturing is now offering the possibility to create parts for demanding sectors using advanced materials such as extremely resistant and rigid materials, or professional flexible plastics: we call them high performance materials. It is also a way to implement more sustainable manufacturing using bio-based materials, with a series of Nylon PA11 materials. BASF and Sculpteo are combining their strengths to offer you these high-performance materials and help you go even further in your projects.
Some of these impressive materials are offering thermal resistance, chemical resistance, or even heat resistance for the most demanding applications.
You can try out some interesting materials such as Ultrasint® PA11 ESD and its electrostatic discharging properties, Ultrasint® PA11 CF reinforced with carbon fibers for more rigidity, Ultrasint® PA11 & MJF PA11 bio-based powders with great resistant properties, Ultrasint® PA6 FR a flame-resistant material, Ultrasint® PA6 MF mineral filled for more resistance, Ultrasint® TPU88A & TPU01 for resistance and flexibility
What about the future?
We can see today that 3D printing is revolutionizing big sectors such as automotive, architecture or medical. But where can this technology still improve?
3D Bioprinting is becoming a big subject for the medical field. Indeed, applications of 3D bioprinting could be numerous. You can easily see the diverse advantages of this technology. It could create human tissue for burn victims. It is also a way to create human organs, in order to perform organ transplants. We can see today that there is not enough donors and bioprinting could be an excellent, fast, and life saving solution.
The 3D bioprinting technology could allow to create various tissue structures, such as kidney tissue, skin tissue.
3D printing for architecture is also improving, but could really become bigger in the upcoming years. Projects faster to build, cheaper, and that avoid material waste: the benefits of this technology for the construction sector are numerous.
3D printing hasn’t reached its limits and many projects and amazing stories are waiting to be written. We already imagine this future in our article on the innovations to come in 3D printing and the top 10 materials 3D printing materials of the future that already exist!
Are you ready to write the future of 3D printing history, and improve your manufacturing process? Start your 3D printing project now. upload your 3D file here and choose among our 3D printing materials catalog to make the most of our 3D printing service.
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Alcom | History of 3D printers
May 13, 2018
Since the beginning of the new millennium, the concept of "3D" has firmly entered our daily lives. First of all, we associate it with cinema, photography or animation. But there is hardly a person now who has not heard about such a novelty as 3D printing at least once in his life.
What is it and what new opportunities in creativity, science, technology and everyday life bring us 3D printing technologies, we will try to figure it out in the article below.
But first, a little history. Although there has been a lot of talk about 3D printing in the last few years, in fact, this technology has been around for a long time. In 1984, Charles Hull developed a 3D printing technology for reproducing objects using digital data, and two years later named and patented the stereolithography technique.
At the same time, this company developed and created the first industrial 3D printer. Subsequently, the baton was taken over by 3D Systems, which developed in 1988 printer model for 3D printing at home SLA - 250.
In the same year, fused deposition modeling was invented by Scott Grump. After several years of relative calm, in 1991 Helisys develops and markets a technology for the production of multilayer objects, and a year later, in 1992, the first selective laser soldering system is released at DTM.
Then, in 1993, Solidscape was founded, which began mass production of inkjet-based printers that are capable of producing small parts with an ideal surface, and at a relatively low cost.
At the same time, the University of Massachusetts patents a 3D printing technology similar to conventional 2D inkjet technology. But, perhaps, the peak of development and popularity of 3D printing still fell on the new, 21st century.
In 2005, the first 3D printer capable of printing in color appeared, this is the brainchild of Z Corp called the Spectrum Z510, and literally two years later the first printer appeared that could reproduce 50% of its own components.
Currently, the scope and scope of 3D printing is constantly growing.
Everything turned out to be subject to these technologies - from blood vessels to coral reefs and furniture. However, we will talk about the areas of application of these technologies a little later.
So, what is printing on a 3d printer?
In short, this is the construction of a real object according to a 3D model created on a computer. Then the digital three-dimensional model is saved in the STL file format, after which the 3D printer, to which the file is output for printing, forms a real product.
The printing process itself is a series of repetitive cycles associated with the creation of three-dimensional models, applying a layer of consumables to the desktop (elevator) of the printer, moving the desktop down to the level of the finished layer and removing waste from the surface of the table.
The cycles follow one after another continuously: the next layer of material is applied on the first layer, the elevator is lowered again and so on until the finished product is on the working table.
How does a 3D printer work?
The application of 3D printing is a serious alternative to traditional methods of prototyping and small-scale production. A three-dimensional or 3D printer, unlike a conventional one that prints two-dimensional drawings, photographs, etc. on paper, makes it possible to output three-dimensional information, that is, to create three-dimensional physical objects.
At the moment, this class of equipment can work with photopolymer resins, various types of plastic filament, ceramic powder and metal clay.
What is a 3d printer?
The principle of operation of a 3d printer is based on the principle of gradual (layered) creation of a solid model, which, as it were, is “grown” from a certain material, which will be discussed a little later. The advantages of 3D printing over the usual, manual methods of building models are high speed, simplicity and relatively low cost.
For example, to create a 3D model or any part manually, it can take quite a long time - from several days to months.
After all, this includes not only the manufacturing process itself, but also preliminary work - drawings and diagrams of the future product, which still do not give a complete vision of the final result.
As a result, development costs increase significantly, the period from product development to its mass production increases.
3D technologies, on the other hand, allow you to completely eliminate manual labor and the need to make drawings and calculations on paper - after all, the program allows you to see the model from all angles already on the screen, and eliminate the identified shortcomings not in the process of creation, as is the case with manual production, but directly during development and create a model in a few hours.
This virtually eliminates the possibility of manual errors.
What is a 3d printer: video
There are various 3D printing technologies. The difference between them lies in the way the product layers are applied. Let's consider the main ones.
The most common are SLS (selective laser plexus), HPM (molten material overlay) and SLA (stereolithiography).
The most widely used technology due to the high speed of building objects is stereolithography or SLA.
SLA Technology
The technology works like this: a laser beam is directed onto a photopolymer, after which the material hardens.
The photopolymer is a translucent material that deforms when exposed to atmospheric moisture.
Once cured, it can be easily glued, machined and painted. The working table (elevator) is in a container with a photopolymer. After the laser beam passes through the polymer and the layer hardens, the working surface of the table moves down.
SLS Technology
Sintering powder reagents under the action of a laser beam - it is also SLS - the only 3D printing technology that is used in the manufacture of molds for both metal and plastic casting.
Plastic models have excellent mechanical properties, which make them suitable for making full-featured items.
SLS technology uses materials that are similar in properties to the brands of the final product: ceramics, powdered plastic, metal.
The 3D printer device looks like this: powder substances are applied to the surface of the elevator and sintered under the action of a laser beam into a solid layer that corresponds to the parameters of the model and determines its shape.
DLP technology
DLP technology is new to the 3D printing market. Stereolithographic printers are positioned today as the main alternative to FDM equipment. This type of printer uses digital light processing technology. Many people wonder what the 3d printer of this sample prints with?
Instead of a plastic filament and a heating head, photopolymer resins and a DLP projector are used to create three-dimensional figures.
Below you can see how the 3d printer works video:
Having heard about a DLP 3d printer for the first time, what it is is a completely reasonable question.
Despite the intricate name, the device is almost no different from other desktop printers. By the way, its developers, represented by
QSQM Technology Corporation, have already launched the first samples of high-tech equipment into a series. It looks like this:
EBM Technology
It should be noted that SLS/DMLS technologies are far from the only ones in the field of metal printing. Currently, electron beam melting is widely used to create metal three-dimensional objects. Laboratory studies have shown that the use of metal wire for layer-by-layer deposition in the manufacture of high-precision parts is ineffective, so engineers have developed a special material - metal clay.
The metal clay used as ink during electron beam melting is made from a mixture of organic glue, metal shavings and a certain amount of water. In order to turn the ink into a solid object, it must be heated to a temperature at which the glue and water will burn out, and the chips will fuse together into a monolith.
EBM 3d printer: how
worksIt is noteworthy that this principle is also used when working with SLS printers. But unlike them, EBM machines generate directed electron pulses instead of a laser beam to melt metal clay. I must say that this method provides high print quality and excellent drawing of small details.
Today, only industrial printers using EBM technology are sold. Here is what one of them looks like:
The video below demonstrates the capabilities of a 3d printer adapted for electron beam melting:
HPM Technology (FDM) HPM
Allows you to create not only models, but also final parts from standard, structural and high-performance thermoplastics. It is the only technology that uses production grade thermoplastics to provide unparalleled mechanical, thermal and chemical strength to parts.
HPM Printing stands out for its cleanliness, ease of use and suitability for office use. Thermoplastic parts are resistant to high temperatures, mechanical stress, various chemicals, wet or dry environments.
Soluble auxiliary materials allow the creation of complex multi-level shapes, cavities and holes that would be problematic to obtain with conventional methods. HPM 3D printers create parts layer by layer by heating the material to a semi-liquid state and extruding it according to computer-generated paths.
HPM printing uses two different materials - one (main) will consist of the finished part, and an auxiliary, which is used for support. The filaments of both materials are fed from the 3D printer bays into the print head, which moves based on changes in the X and Y coordinates and fuses the material, creating the current layer, until the base moves down and the next layer begins.
When the 3D printer has finished creating the part, it remains to separate the auxiliary material mechanically, or dissolve it with detergent, after which the product is ready for use.
Interestingly, not only automatic desktop HPM printers are popular these days, but also manual printing devices.
Moreover, it would be correct to call them not printing devices, but pens for drawing three-dimensional objects.
Pens are made in the same way as printers using fusing technology. The plastic thread is fed into the pen, where it melts to the desired consistency and is immediately squeezed out through a miniature nozzle! With proper skill, these original decorative figures are obtained:
And of course, just like technologies, printers themselves differ from each other. If you have a printer that works according to SLA, then it will be impossible to apply SLS technology on it, i.e., each printer was created only for a certain printing technology.
3D printing applications
3D printing has opened up great opportunities for experimentation in areas such as architecture, construction, medicine, education, clothing design, small-scale production, jewelry, and even in the food industry.
In architecture, for example, 3D printing allows you to create three-dimensional models of buildings, or even entire neighborhoods with all the infrastructure - squares, parks, roads and street lighting.
Thanks to the cheap gypsum composite used, the cost of finished models is low. And more than 390 thousand CMYK shades make it possible to embody any, even the most daring, imagination of an architect in color.
3d printer: construction application
In construction, there is every reason to believe that in the near future the process of erecting buildings will be much faster and easier. Californian engineers have created a 3D printing system for large objects. It works on the principle of a construction crane, erecting walls from layers of concrete.
This printer can build a two-story house in just 20 hours.
After that, the workers will only have to carry out finishing work. 3D House 3D printers are gradually gaining a strong position in small-scale production.
These technologies are mainly used for the production of exclusive products, such as art, role-playing game characters, prototype models of future products or any structural parts.
In medicine, thanks to 3D printing technologies, doctors have been able to recreate copies of the human skeleton, which allows them to more accurately practice techniques that increase the guarantee of successful operations.
3D printers are increasingly being used in the field of prosthetics in dentistry, as these technologies allow much faster production of prostheses than with traditional manufacturing.
Not so long ago, German scientists developed a technology for obtaining human skin. In its manufacture, a gel obtained from donor cells is used. And in 2011, scientists managed to reproduce a living human kidney.
As you can see, the possibilities that 3D printing opens up in almost all areas of human activity are truly endless.
Printers that create culinary masterpieces that reproduce prostheses and human organs, toys and visual aids, clothes and shoes are no longer a figment of the imagination of science fiction writers, but the realities of modern life.
And what other horizons will open before mankind in the coming years, perhaps, this can only be limited by the imagination of the person himself.
3D Printers
A Brief History of 3D Printing — Tsvetnoy Mir on vc.ru
3D printing was born 40 years ago and opened up amazing opportunities for creating various models in prototyping, dentistry, small-scale production, customized products, miniatures, sculptures, mock-ups and much more another.
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Who invented the 3D printer? What was the first 3D printing technology? And what was the first thing they printed on a 3D printer? Let's open the veil of secrecy over a huge number of interesting facts and stories about the emergence of technology.
So, how it all began...
Stage 1: The birth of an idea
Dr. Hideo Kodama, creator of the rapid prototyping system (1980)
A doctor from the Nagoya Municipal Industrial Research Institute, Hideo Kodama, applied for a patent for a device that layer-by-layer formed a rigid object from photopolymer resin using UV light.
In fact, he described a modern photopolymer printer, but could not provide the necessary data for patent registration within a year, as required by patent law, and abandoned the idea. However, in many sources it is he who is called the inventor of 3D printing technology.
In 1983, three engineers - Alain Le Meho, Olivier de Witt and Jean-Claude Andre from the French National Center for Scientific Research, in an attempt to create what they called a "fractal object", came up with the idea of using a laser and a monomer, which, under the influence laser turned into a polymer. They applied for a patent 3 weeks before the American Chuck Hal. The first object created on the apparatus was a spiral staircase. Engineers called the technology stereolithography, and the patent was approved only in 1986 year. Thanks to them, the most famous file format for 3D printing is called STL (from the English stereolithography). Unfortunately, the institute did not see any prospects in the invention and its commercialization, and the patent was not used to create the final product.
Chuck Hull, creator of SLA laser stereolithography (1984)
At the same time, Chuck Hull worked for a company that made countertop and furniture coatings using UV lamps. The production of small plastic parts for prototyping new product designs took up to two months. Chuck came up with the idea to speed up this process by combining UV technology and layering thin plastic. The company gave him a small laboratory for experiments, where he worked in the evenings and weekends. As a material, Chuck used acrylic-based photopolymers that harden under the influence of ultraviolet radiation. One night, after months of experimentation, he was finally able to print a sample and was so elated by luck that he walked home. Chuck showed his invention to his wife. It was an eyewash cup, more like a communion cup, according to the wife. It is considered officially the first 3D printed model in the world and is still kept by the Hull family, and after their death will be transferred to the Smithsonian Research Institute in Washington.
Hull cup
Chuck Hull filed a patent application on August 8, 1984 and was approved on March 11, 1986. The invention was called "Apparatus for creating three-dimensional objects using stereolithography." Chuck founded his own company - 3D Systems, and in 1988 launched the first commercial 3D printer - the SL1 model.
Karl Deckard and Joe Beeman (right), inventors of SLS 3D printing (1987)
Another new way of 3D printing appeared around the same time as SLA printing. This is selective laser sintering (SLS), which uses a laser to turn a free-flowing powder (instead of resin) into a solid material. It was developed by Carl Deckard, a young undergraduate student at the University of Texas at Austin, and his teacher, Prof. Dr. Joe Beeman. And the idea belonged to Karl. At 19In 87, they together founded Desk Top Manufacturing (DTM) Corp. However, it will take at least another 20 years for SLS 3D printing to become commercially available to the consumer.
In 2001, the company was bought out by Chaka Hull, 3D Systems.
Scott Crump, developer of the FDM 3D printing method (1988)
Surprisingly, a simpler and cheaper way of 3D printing - FDM (Fused Deposition Modeling) was created after SLA and SLS, in 1988. Its author was the aeronautical engineer Scott Crump. Crump was looking for an easy way to make a toy frog for his daughter and used a hot glue gun to melt the plastic and pour it into layers. Thus, the idea of FDM 3D printing was born, a technology for layer-by-layer deposition of a plastic thread. Crump patented a new idea and co-founded Stratasys with his wife Lisa Crump at 1989 year. In 1992, they launched their first production product, the Stratasys 3D Modeler, on the market.
Milestone 2: 3D printing becomes available
The first units built by 3D Systems and Stratasys were bulky and expensive. The cost of one was hundreds of thousands of dollars, and only the largest companies in the automotive and aerospace industries could use them.
Printers had a lot of limitations and could not be widely used. The development of technology has been very slow. 20 years later, in 2005, the RepRap project (Replicating Rapid Prototyper) appeared - a self-replicating mechanism for rapid prototyping.
It was inspired by Dr. Adrian Bauer of the University of Bath in the UK. The goal of the project was to "self-copy", replicate the components of the 3D printers themselves. In the photo, all the plastic parts of the "child" are printed on the "parent". But in fact, a group of enthusiasts led by Adrian were finally able to create a budget 3D printer for home or office use.
The idea was quickly taken up by three New York technologists and started a desktop FDM printer company, MakerBot. This was the second turning point in the modern history of 3D printing.
Other technologies were being developed in parallel. One of them is bioprinting. Thomas Boland of Clemson University has patented the use of inkjet printing to 3D print living cells, making it possible to print human organs in the future.
Dozens of companies around the world conduct research in this area.
Another important use of the new technology was the creation of prostheses, first conventional, and then bionic. In 2008, the first printed prosthesis was successfully transplanted into a patient and allowed him to return to a normal lifestyle.
Another milestone has been the emergence of open source print files on the Internet. Websites www.thingiverse.com, www.myminifactory.com and many others contain both free and paid files for 3D printing. Users share models online and print them themselves.
Stage 3: 3D printing today
In recent years, 3D printing has become available to the mass consumer: the price of printers has dropped significantly, and their use has become more convenient. Photopolymer 3D printers print detailed models with high precision and resolution. The number of users is growing, including due to the huge community of enthusiasts who are ready to help beginners.
