What happens when you need a ton of things 3D printed
in a short amount of time?
[MUSIC - ANDREAS ERICSON, "OLD SCHOOL FREESTYLE 2"]
You send them off to a 3D printing service.
Today, we're going to go visit a 3D printing factory here
in China.
He went to the other side of the road
where I can't really get to him.
You're not supposed to do this.
About a week ago, my friend Sasha
sent me this picture of a giant pile of 3D-printed robot parts
he'd ordered, and as soon as I saw it,
I said I've got to go see the factory that did that.
All right, now find Sasha.
How's it going?
Good, how about yourself?
Good.
Good to see you.
So what are we going to go see?
We're going to see a 3D printing factory.
It's a really cool factory that prints SLA, FDM,
like, with PLA, with ABS, with, like,
lasers and stuff like that-- a lot of different technologies.
I don't actually know what the processes look like,
but I'm really excited to find out.
And so how did this work?
You went to their website and you uploaded your file
and you put in your credit card?
Nothing like that.
It was way simpler.
Somebody hooked me up with Max, who is like the sales person
there.
Awesome.
And we just send her files and she just prints them
and sends them the next day.
Well let's go check it out.
Yeah, I'm super excited.
I know, me to.
So this is a part of every factory visit ever.
We're here, but we don't know which building.
Right now, we're at a car dealership, which
seems unlikely that it's also a 3D printing factory,
but you never know.
Could be up there.
[SPEAKING CHINESE]
[MUSIC - ANDREAS ERICSON, "OLD SCHOOL FREESTYLE 2"]
Yeah, this is it.
Hi.
Hello.
Yeah, are you Leo?
Yes, Leo.
Scotty.
Sasha.
Nice to meet you.
Yes.
Nice to meet you.
Thank you for having us.
So follow to my office.
OK.
Our SLA workshop.
Oh, wow.
We have eight machines.
You guys have eight machines here.
That's pretty awesome.
Can we look?
Yes.
Oh, cool.
Oh, wow.
I've never seen that before in person.
It's pretty awesome, isn't it?
So are these all printing, now?
Yes.
Some of them are finished, though, so.
You can see that this is printing.
Just starting.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Oh, I see, yeah, yeah, yeah, nice.
Is that resin?
Like, is it liquid--
Yeah, resin, liquid, yes.
And so it adds more on top.
Yes.
Yeah, looks kind of--
Each step's thickness is 0.1 millimeter.
Has how much?
0.1 millimeter.
0.1.
Yes, yes.
Yeah.
We have three materials here.
DSM.
OK, yeah.
Made in Europe, yes.
This is a transparent part.
Are these machines made in China?
Yeah, yeah, in China, yes, but material is made in Europe.
Also, the laser part made in German.
In Germany, oh, I see.
[MUSIC - BLOSSOM LEARNING, "QUANTUM"]
They might be printing this.
We sent an order for 55 pieces of this yesterday.
How much does one of these machines cost?
Cost about 350,000 rmb.
So like, $50,000?
Yeah.
How many parts per day do you print here?
100 to 200 orders.
This is 24 hours running.
Yeah.
Wow.
Yeah.
This is temperature.
Because of the laser system, the temperature
we should control from 20 degrees to 30 degrees.
Humidity we have to be less than 40%.
If it's over 40%, the material will get a problem.
We cannot use the white light in this room, yes.
But why?
Because of the materials, because this material
is a different material, when it sees the white light,
get a problem.
So if you use normal lights, it will cure your material,
your material will get hard.
Yes.
So you use these orange-yellow lights
so that you can look inside machines
and open the doors without it ruining the print.
Yes, yes.
Yeah.
Got it.
This is super-cool.
This is our polishing room.
Ah.
Because these parts, after we print, then we polish them.
Because, you see, there are many supports.
This is a support module.
We have to take out the support and to polish the surface.
Yes.
Yeah.
Normally we have to do the polishing by the sandpaper.
We can see all the days.
And this is the delivery date.
Delivery date is very important for us.
What is a typical turnaround for you, for SLA?
Like when someone orders, what's the typical due date?
Normally 24 hours.
24 hours, so.
Yeah, normally 24 hours.
So you have 24 hours until it's delivered,
or until you ship it out?
Shipped out.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yes, yes.
It's dirty.
Yeah, I know it is dirty.
To wash the parts when they finish the print.
Oh, this is for washing off, here.
You can see this order we did for San Francisco customer.
So you'll ship those like, FedEx or DHL?
Yes, yes, yes.
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Leo, who is a typical customer?
Why are they ordering parts?
What are these generally for?
Is it for prototypes, is it for--
Yes, for prototypes.
Prototypes.
For what types of products?
Not sure.
Not sure, you just make the parts.
Yes, they send me the file to us,
we can't tell what is they want to do.
Yes.
This is our silicone molds.
You see this is silicone.
Oh, silicone.
Yes.
SLA, we just make the original parts, one part,
and then we use the silicone mold.
They can copy a few parts with this mold.
For example, we've got the SLA piece, and then
to make the mold and take out the original piece,
and then we use the other materials
to inject and then take out.
Yeah.
We also can make the softer parts or other colors part,
because now the SLA only can print
the hard part, and the white part, or the transparent.
Got it.
If you need other colors or some softer parts,
we use silicone mold.
So what material is this?
ABS.
Yeah.
And so you can cast ABS?
Yes.
You don't have to injection mold it.
We don't need to injection mold.
This is ABS-like material.
Like--
Similar to ABS.
Yes, yes, yes.
You can get really good detail on these.
This character is very, very crisp.
And so how many parts can you make with one mold?
Normally one mold for the 10 parts.
10 parts.
That's right, yes.
So, not 1,000 with one.
Yes, no, no.
Just for small quantities.
Got it.
Oh, yeah.
OK.
Oh, so this would be for like a phone case or something, maybe.
Yeah, this looks like it was for a phone.
That's awesome.
Looks like there's like the camera and everything here.
Mm-hmm, yeah, the camera hole.
What kind of materials do you use for softer?
Like the rubber, or like TPU.
We can do the different hardness from the 48--
soft's 48-- to the 98.
Awesome.
You can choose.
You can choose your hardness.
Yeah, you can let us know, OK.
Which hardness do you want?
We can make it.
I don't know how to operate this, because I'm not
the regular operator.
But this one's for the silicone mold to--
To make it hot?
To take out the air.
Ah, like a vacuum.
Yes, yes.
Ah, OK.
Yeah.
Yeah, cool, to remove the bubbles.
Yes, yes.
Got it.
The remove-bubble machine.
These are all the same?
These are vacuum--
Yeah, they're the same.
OK, wow.
This is an older machine, this is a new machine.
Ah, OK, so you're upgrading.
Yeah.
Cool.
[MUSIC PLAYING - BLOSSOM LEARNING, "QUANTUM"]
So Leo, you, let's see, you printed a bunch of PLA parts
for Sasha.
That was another factory that did the PLA?
PLA, we do it in the shop directly.
We have many printers.
We have more than 10 printers in the Huaqiang shop.
So they print directly.
Important part of every factory visit
is to make sure you get a photo with the boss in front
of the sign, so.
How do we--
Can we do one more?
One?
So, Leo, I'm going to teach both of you how I take pictures.
So there are three important things to take a good photo.
First, bigger the mouth, better the photo.
That's step one.
Second step, face frame.
The third step is, who are you with?
So you point at who you're with.
[CAMERA SHUTTER]
What do you think?
First off, thank you for showing us your factory.
Yes, thanks for coming.
This is really cool.
[SPEAKING CHINESE]
If people want to do business with you, if they
want to order parts from you, what is the best way for them
to contact you?
Email.
You can go to our website, also.
OK, OK, awesome.
So what I'll do is I'll put your email
and your website in the video description.
So if you want to work with Leo and Lexcent, I don't know,
this seems like a pretty cool factory,
they seem to make really good parts.
So check out their website and their email below,
and you can get in touch.
Sasha, if people want to get in touch with you,
what's the best place to find you?
My YouTube channel.
Awesome.
We'll link that in the description as well.
Absolutely.
Awesome.
Cool, man.
Well that was pretty cool.
Yeah I was really excited.
And we got to see a lot of SLA machines,
although, no FDM machines.
I want to see those.
I know, that was kind of what I was excited to see, to be
honest, was the FDM setup.
Maybe you can see them in the market.
Yeah, right, but apparently they're
just doing that all in the market.
Yeah.
I guess?
Kind of a surprise.
Yeah.
So anyway, a little bit of a bummer we didn't get to see--
I thought we were going to see, like,
a 100 FDM machines, which is what I was really fired up
about.
But it was really cool to see a production,
industrial-scale SLA operation, which really like,
that's kind of the standard prototyping technique here.
Like if you're going to go do injection molding or something
like that, SLA is your go-to.
Well, it's always an adventure visiting factories here
in China.
This one was no exception.
There's one more thing, which is that in 2018, one
of my big goals for Strange Parts
is to visit more factories.
But I want to know what kind of factories
do you guys want to see?
Now we probably can't get into like, any big brand name
factories, right.
We're not going to go see Foxconn's iPhone
plant, or the Xbox factory, or something like that.
But generic stuff, like, you know, cell phones,
we'd probably get into a cell phone factory.
We could go see how fidget spinners are
made, hoverboards--
you tell me.
What do you guys want to go see?
Leave a comment below.
Tell me what you're interested in.
And also, if you have a factory that you can get me in to see
and it's cool, send me an email to factories@strangeparts.com.
I'd love to hear from you.
As always, guys, I'm Scotty from Strange Parts.
If you enjoyed this video, hit that subscribe button
down below.
And stay tuned for more adventures.
I'll see you next time.
[MUSIC - ANDREAS ERICSON, "OLD SCHOOL FREESTYLE 2"]