Creating an object with Powder Bed Fusion technology and polymer powder is generally known as Selective Laser Sintering (SLS). As industrial patents expire, these types of 3D printing technology are becoming increasingly common and lower cost. First, a bin of polymer powder is heated to a temperature just below the polymer’s melting point. Next, a …
Looking at Digital Light Processing machines, these types of 3D printing technology are almost the same as SLA. The key difference is that DLP uses a digital light projector to flash a single image of each layer all at once (or multiple flashes for larger parts). Because the projector is a digital screen, the image …
SLA holds the historical distinction of being the world’s first 3D printing technology. Stereolithography was invented by Chuck Hull in 1986, who filed a patent on the technology and founded the company 3D Systems to commercialize it. An SLA printer uses mirrors, known as galvanometers or galvos, with one positioned on the X-axis and another …
Material Extrusion devices are the most commonly available — and the cheapest — types of 3D printing technology in the world. You might be familiar with them as Fused Deposition Modeling, or FDM. They are also sometimes referred to as Fused Filament Fabrication, or FFF. The way it works is that a spool of filament …
Material Extrusion devices are the most commonly available — and the cheapest — types of 3D printing technology in the world. You might be familiar with them as Fused Deposition Modeling, or FDM. They are also sometimes referred to as Fused Filament Fabrication, or FFF. The way it works is that a spool of filament …
