Tuesday, November 17, 2020
3D Printering: The Things Printers Don’t Do
Hackaday: 3D printers are amazing things, but if one judges solely by the successes that get showcased online, it can look as through anything at all is possible. Yet in many ways, 3D printers are actually quite limited. Because success looks easy and no one showcases failure, people can end up with lopsided ideas of what is realistic. This isn’t surprising; behind every shining 3D print that pushes the boundaries of the technology, there are misprints and test pieces piled just out of sight.
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6 comments:
This is a good article for anyone looking into 3D printing, whether for personal or professional use. The first portion talks about the work that needs to be done before you can even turn on the machine. Generating a 3D model of something is no small task, and it becomes even more challenging when you add in the modeling constraints for 3D printers. I spent a fair amount of time this past summer fighting and finagling 3D printers in an engineering shop, where their limits were certainly pushed. A good chunk of the prep work went into proper modeling and adjustments for parts that would otherwise have failed. Flat surfaces, rounded edges, thin walls, overhangs, etc. all need to be considered in the same way we need to think about machinability or assembly in more rigid manufacturing environments. Furthermore, while websites have amassed impressive libraries of random 3D part files, you will often need to make adjustments to suit your need. 3D printers are definitely getting better and many of these problems will diminish over time, but it is important to know what you are getting yourself into before assume a 3D printer can 'work its magic'.
In a lot of ways, 3D printing and additive manufacturing are vastly misunderstood, even by their operators. Their fabled capabilities have joined the ranks of other engineering materials, like unobtainium and hope. That is not to discount 3D printing- it really can achieve some incredible things. The problem is that most design solutions came about through subtractive methods: cutting, milling, sanding, etc. As such, design considerations for additive manufacturing are sometimes unintuitive. Even our concept of how long a 3d print should take varies in a different way than we would expect for, say, a milling operation. In addition to the complexity of the part, one must also consider the ratio of surface area to total volume, as an object with a higher surface area will take significantly longer than a sphere of the same volume. Overall, 3D printing and additive manufacturing processes require a different perspective, workflow, and considerations than more traditional manufacturing and fabrication methods.
I think this is a lovely reality checking article about 3D printing. I think a lot of the article about 3D printing I see on the blog are all about how awesome 3D printing is and all these massive cool things being done with the technology, but often glosses over all the prep time it takes before something can be printed. If I’ve learned anything this semester, it is that the CAD model can take a lot of time to put together. I know that sometimes I get so caught up in how cool the fabrication process is that I forget to give credit to how cool the pre-fabrication process or the design process is in the maker world too. I guess this is just a reminder that even though 3D printing is a wonderful craft, with lots of open source information, and incredibly versatile in application, it's still a fabrication process with its own science and mechanics, and you need to do your research in order to fabricate safely and effectively.
This article is a great jumping off point for designers or directors who like 3D printing and believe that this technology gives them permission to ask for the moon. Indeed the amount of work necessary to create a 3D model in CAD before the printer can even be fired can be rather intensive and if a props artisan can get the one of a kind item made faster out of mode than 3D printing is not the solution. The best times for 3D printing are when you will need a lot of things that can be repeated over and over. Each time you need another copy, it makes the cost of modeling it more worth it. Or ideally, like the article said if you can just find a model already made online. I will say the article does not hit on the structural limitations of 3D printing pieces. While great for set dressing, I don’t know if we’re ready to have 3D printed items involved in holding sets together.
While I don’t have a 3D printer myself and I have little experience with them, I’ve been interested in wanting to use them for a while now but have been too worried about not knowing enough an messing things up to really start. I think this is pretty cool article since most of the time, we read about all of the new and cool capabilities of 3D printers an ignore that everything comes with some limitations. I knew beforehand that 3D printing required CAD/ modeling work, and after trying my hand in some 3D modeling programs, I can agree that it’s not easy work. Especially when trying to make something accurate. It’s also had to remember sometimes the way that 3D printing works means that certain shapes can’t be made, since it’s a solely additive process that works up in layers. Even with the limitations of what it can and can not do, there is still a lot of room for creativity.
This is a really important article for anyone entering 3d printing or for anyone thinking that they should add it to their workflow or their tool set. Understanding the true limitations of any tool is important but I think with 3d printers especially so. A lot of the time people simply think they can create “anything” with a 3d printer and that simply is not always true, it is a fantastic manufacturing process and presents us with amazing capabilities but it has limits. I think 3d printing is also a process that is still growing and finding its place. People understand a table saw they understand a CNC. Additive manufacturing is a relatively new process for a lot of people and a lot of makers we are use to taking things down to components and assembling the idea of simply creating from thin air is new to all of us.
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