3D Printing Materials (5) Page 5

3D printing in color has been around longer than you think. Do you need a prototype printed in yellow ABS? No problem, load a yellow spool of filament in your 3D printer and voilà! You have yourself a yellow part. How about blue? We have you covered, just toss some blue photopolymer in your SLA vat and BAM! A blue part can be printed. How about a part with multiple colors? No problem. Break out the trusty sandpaper and good old-fashion elbow grease, maybe some primer, then either spray or hand paint your model until your heart is content.

Oh… you were hoping to have full color printed parts straight off the printer? Why didn’t you say so? Let me introduce you to Stratasys PolyJet technology.

Carbon fiber has become a very popular item in the Additive Manufacturing world. There are a slew of companies offering various carbon fiber solutions. Stratasys also has their own Nylon12 based carbon fiber material on their Fortus line of 3D printers, but this is a new solution for their F123 series of 3D printers.  ABS Carbon Fiber Filled material is set to be released for the F170, F270, and F370 in April, so let's take a closer look at ABS-CF10.

Carbon fiber materials and carbon-reinforced polymers can replace metal for lighter, more ergonomic tooling. Add to that the power of additive manufacturing to print the part, rather than machine it, and you can significantly reduce both your part weight and tooling lead time. In this article, we are going to review the differences in printable carbon fiber materials and the machines capable of printing them to understand how the 3D printing industry has created approachable solutions for just about every level of production. 

As an Application Engineer with TriMech, my role often takes me into many manufacturing environments ranging from mom-and-pop machine shops to aerospace manufactures. As different as you may think these facilities would be, we often find a common trend – most custom fixtures, jigs, equipment, and assembly tools are made from aluminum. The biggest reason when asked about this is because “it's what we have always used,” and “it's what the toolroom prefers to work with.” When probed further we usually hear “aluminum is more than strong enough,” so it is chosen for a task that nowhere near approaches aluminum’s tensile strength benefits. There is a wide variety of materials out there other than aluminum that may fit some of these needs better. In this article we’re going to take a look at how printed polymers stack up against it.

If you’re looking to get more durable, tear-resistant prototypes that can stand up to repeated flexing, you can’t go wrong with Agilus. 3D-printable Agilus is a superior rubber-like PolyJet photopolymer family ideal for advanced design verification and rapid prototyping that can hit various levels of softness and hardness in the same print job without any assembly or having to swap materials during printing. 

This week's Product Story showcases the Toro Company and the solution they used for rapidly increasing 3D print volume while reducing existing bottlenecks. 

The Toro Company first implemented Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) in 2012 to prototype smaller product components in-house. This soon turned into a full additive manufacturing shop with six 3D printers on site so they could better serve their customers and expand their additive potential. However, with the rapidly increasing print volume there were post-processing bottlenecks that arose, so Toro turned to the PostProcess BASE support removal solution to more efficiently match throughput to demand. 

It is a scientifically proven fact that playing with toys can improve your mood, so this holiday season I decided to play with the 3D printing “toys” I am lucky enough to have access to here at TriMech! A few years ago I was able to create some incredible Snowman Holiday Snow Globe Ornaments in full color plus clear (and they still adorn our Christmas Tree’s and desks at TriMech this time of year). Since then, Stratasys has added an incredible new machine to its lineup, as well as a wonderful new material, so I felt that this would be a great time to revisit that design and see what these advancements are capable of.

Here at TriMech, we fancy ourselves the jack of all trades or the wearer of many hats of the engineering world. With extensive experience with the different facets of CAD, 3D printing, 3D scanning and training, we know that your business probably doesn't just stick to one lane, either. With that in mind, we are bringing you four on-demand webinars focused around 3D innovation, full of ideas and tools to bring your company to the next level!

This time last year, we were creating some amazing multi-color and multi-material lollipops using the incredible Stratasys J850. This year, I thought that it would be fun to try something a bit different and see if we could put our industrial design skills to the test and make some fun, slightly spooky, moderately goofy Halloween ghost pendants using the brand new Stratasys J55 PolyJet 3D printer! In doing so, we’ll learn about a fascinating process using an advanced image editing software which can be applied to all sorts of projects.