PolyJet Technology Page 1

Additive manufacturing is widely used among many different industries with companies taking advantage of its many benefits. There are several additive manufacturing technologies including Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM), Stereolithography (SL), PolyJet, Direct Metal Laser Sintering (DMLS), Powder Bed Fusion, Programmable PhotoPolymerization (P3™), Selective Absorption Fusion (SAF) and more, each with advantages and disadvantages depending on the application. 

In the kingdom of 3D printing FDM (Fused Deposition Modeling) has long reigned as the most well-known and accessible technology. However, the tides are changing as technology grows and more options become accessible. TriMech has offerings in several areas of 3D printing technologies including FDM, P3 (Programmable Photo-Polymerization), SL (stereolithography), SAF (Selective Absorption Fusion), and PolyJet. Today we will be focusing on the top 5 industry uses of PolyJet.

Properly maintaining your 3D printer is the best and most important way to ensure the optimal performance and longevity of your 3D printing machine. By disregarding these maintenance tips and procedures, you are guaranteed to have bad prints and malfunctioning parts. Here at TriMech, we don’t want to see your investment go to the scrapyard just because the maintenance on the machine was neglected. There are four maintenance categories that you want to focus on, and we’ll cover them in this article. They are head cleaning, maintenance wizards, material storage, and machine cleaning.

Keeping a properly maintained and efficient running 3D printer takes time and a dedicated schedule so that your printer continues to reliably print parts as it did on day one. In the long run, a properly maintained printer is simply easier to run, more efficient, less trouble, offers better prints and provides a higher ROI. There are four main categories to maintaining your FDM printer so that it continues to produce optimal and reliable prints, and in this article, we’ll break down the maintenance items into four sections. They are calibration, material storage, tips and flicker brush system, and overall cleanliness of the machine.

The idea for this tip came to me as I was working on my remote-control (RC) Ornithopter design. The goal is to securely fasten the flap mechanism for flight and at the same time, a way for me to disassemble when needed. There are a few methods I can use to add threads to this 3D printed part, and in this article, I will add threads using the best method for this application. Glue is an excellent lightweight and strong option, however, I wanted to be able to disassemble my bird. So glue won’t cut it. I needed a better solution. For me, that means incorporating set screws and threads into my design. Let’s look at three methods typically used to add threads to 3D parts and why I chose one method over the others.

With many 3D printing technologies on the market, only one reigns supreme when it comes to building parts with multiple materials at one time – Stratasys PolyJet. We find that many people get very excited about multi-material printing (and rightfully so), but they seem to quickly get intimidated by the process (NOT rightfully so). In this article, I want to show how easy it is to work with multi-material builds using Stratasys PolyJet printers. Spoiler alert – it is just as easy as FDM.

Vat photopolymerization, which was first conceived in the early 1980s, laid the foundation for additive as we know it today. Since the early machines and processes, software, hardware and even firmware have been bolstered to withstand harsh manufacturing environments and constant round-the-clock operation. With these advancements in technology, it only makes sense to develop materials in the additive world that exhibit quintessential manufacturing material properties, such as high rigidity, low surface friction or even increased thermal or chemical resistance for applications that require it. Therefore, Stratasys has partnered with some of the leading materials manufacturers across the globe such as Henkel Loctite, DSM and BASF to bring the toughest and highest performing thermoset resins to industry-leading additive platform known as Origin One. Let’s take a look at this impressive 3D printing resin.

Creating optically clear parts via traditional manufacturing methods is often either cost-prohibitive, geometrically limiting, or outright impossible. Additive Manufacturing has allowed for a new way of thinking about prototyping and part production through its material versatility, and one of the more popular families of materials is the optically clear and translucent variety. However, there are instances where something that is meant to be optically clear comes off the machine with an unwanted tint or coloration. Why is that and what do you need to do to make it truly optically clear?

Double, Double, Toil and Trouble! This year for Halloween the TriMech RP Services team is brewing up some cute little flexible spiders to decorate the office and you can join along and print some of your own using our multiple material recipe! You may not have a need for spiders, but you probably can think of some applications where combining rigid and flexible materials would come in handy.