3D Printers

**Please note**

Prints taking over 18 hours OR 200g of filament will need to be approved by a lab tech.

Weapons may NOT be printed in the Makerspace.

Purpose: Complex Plastic Shapes

3D printed parts can be used in design prototypes in place of plastic parts that would normally be injection molded in production.

Types of 3D printers

FDM / FFF: Solid plastic filament is heated into a liquid, extruded, and then re-solidifies. Most of our printers are FDM (Fused Deposition Modeling)/FFF (Fused Filament Fabrication). These parts are typically made of ABS or PLA.

SLA: Stereolithography 3D Printing occurs when a laser light draws a pattern in a resin tank to selectively cure resin into the model. Our Peopoly Resin Printer is an example of an SLA printer.

SLS: Selective Laser Sintering printers typically melt powdered material in a tray to build up 3D printed parts. This technique can be used to make parts out of materials that cannot be used for 3D printing otherwise, such as metals.

3D Printing Files

3D models can either be created in CAD softwares like AutoCAD, or pulled from websites like Thingiverse. Most 3D printers require that you convert your 3D file (usually an stl file) to gcode, which gives the printer instructions on how to print the design. This can be done using a slicer, which is a program that converts an stl file to a gcode file that contains more information about the print, such as temperatures, layer height, and printing paths. 

Design Tips

Printing/ Layer Direction

The 3D printed parts are going to be weakest along the direction that is held together by layer adhesion. If a part you are designing needs to be structural in any way, be sure to think about which way a part is printing. 

Consider breaking parts up that will need to be printed with a large amount of support material and assembling after printing.

Adding Fillets

Try to avoid sharp internal corners. If you notice your design has one, it is often helpful to add a fillet feature, which increases the cross-sectional area of the layers, allowing for improved adhesion. This will help prevent separation in the spots where the part is the weakest.