Industrial 3d printing is changing the way companies develop products and
devices with prototypes in hand within days designers and engineers can iterate
and validate designs faster than ever before
and since parts are manufactured in commercial-grade materials
3d printing is even being used as a production method for and used
components so how does the technology work where does it fit in product
development cycles and how can you leverage 3d printing to its fullest
potential we really take pride in making better quality parts than anybody
running even the same equipment that we're running we take an approach that
we want to be able to manufacture the same part across all machines and the
way that we manage that is through just rigorous preventative maintenance on our
equipment we constantly make improvements to our maintenance
schedules our calibration routines on the machines we're really pushing our
ultimate goal which is to build a part across an array of machines with the
same outcome we have checklists associated with absolutely everything
our folks who are preparing builds to go onto the machines know what removing the
support structures are breaking out apart from the machine is like so they
know what the end product is going to be so they get a better understanding of
why this person set the part of that way why this little piece of support
structure is where you don't want it to be because it's hard to get to well
there's a reason for it and we make sure our people understand where this come
from once your order is placed it's reviewed
for issues by by technical staff and we're performing offsets to the CAD file
to ensure the parts as accurate as possible depending on the printing tech
we're adding support structure to the part to capture all the down facing
surfaces possibly tilting the part to control warping issues
it's then sliced into the thousands of layers and that
has been pushed out to the printer for the part we built among 3d print
processes out there all of them Stella Fogg Rafi really excels in small
feature resolution and tight tolerances and smooth surface finishes sterile a
thug Rafi was very early on adopted by the medical industry so we do a wide
range of medical devices medical instruments probably the largest benefit
of SLS specifically is the fact that this is an actual thermoplastic material
so it exhibits much better mechanical properties a large percentage of our
parts or customers that are doing injection molding but they realize they
can take advantage of the reduction of components with snapped it's living
hinges SLS you see more induce functional prototypes where maybe
surface quality is much of a desire for the customer when they want to do good
form and fit functional testing a good use of DMLs technology is reduction of
components so any way that you can reduce the assembly time reduce the part
count it's going to in turn reduce the cost of the process anything that goes
up in the air adds weight and weight adds fuel and cost so reduction of
components is very key in the aerospace industry for that reason the density of
the DMLs parts is going to be very comparable to a billet or machined metal
part strength properties and all the different specifications are also going
to be very close to what you would see out of a machine or diecast part
we differentiate ourselves from desktop 3d printers because we're running
industrial level equipment and we have a process engineering staff that maintains
the process and the machines to a very high level and we're able to produce
very high quality parts with that our very reproducible order to orbiter and
customer to customer prototypes is a technology agnostic company we have over
70 pieces of industrial 3d printing equipment we are open to using any
manufacturers equipment assuming it meets the guidelines and quality WI for
our customers an advantage many of our customers get from this technology is
the reduction in inventory they need on hand rather than stockpiling a ton of
parts in multiple years in advance they can pour on demand as needed product
development is first and foremost quick turnaround getting near fully functional
parts right off the machines that you're turning product design iteration times
around in days instead of weeks ready to elevate your product development cycle
with industrial 3d printing get one to 50 plus prototypes and production parts
in as fast as one day at proto labs if you have a CAD model ready upload it
today at proto labs comm for an instant quote with real time pricing info and
design feedback