{"id":182,"date":"2017-01-18T09:38:15","date_gmt":"2017-01-18T09:38:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/itinnovation\/?p=182"},"modified":"2018-10-04T10:02:38","modified_gmt":"2018-10-04T09:02:38","slug":"3d-printingtechnology-overview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/itinnovation\/2017\/01\/18\/3d-printingtechnology-overview\/","title":{"rendered":"3D Printing Technology Overview"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>3D printing is an additive manufacturing process which creates a physical object from a digital design. It involves\u00a0using layers of material, building the structures through construction of layers of materials to grow the structure from\u00a0bottom upwards. 3D printing technology has been around for quite a while, however, recently it has expanded its\u00a0usage into many different applications, services, products and manufacturers. This article will introduce the history\u00a0and concept of 3D printing, compare the advantages and disadvantages of the 3D technology. Then, it will explain<br \/>\nthe mechanisms of the different 3D printing technologies. Furthermore, based on the requirements of IT Innovation\u00a0Center, we will recommend which model of 3D printer could be adopted, and suggest any potential experiment or 3D\u00a0printing service from the IT Innovation Centre.<\/p>\n<p>3D printing started in the 1980s. At that time it used to be referred to as rapid prototyping where companies were able\u00a0to use it to visualize the shape of the component. The market for enterprise 3D printers continues to expand with an\u00a0explosion in the number of new vendors, services, products and uses. This explosion was due to two main reasons.\u00a0First, during the last ten years the technology has evolved from the prototyping level to the manufacturing level,\u00a0specifically when it started to move from plastics to metallic materials. 3D printing materials now support plastic,\u00a0sand, ceramic to metal, with different colours available too, this much widen the usages of 3D printing. Second, the\u00a0patent for fused deposition modelling (FDM) \u2013 one of the most common 3D printing technology expired in 2009,\u00a0which contributed a lot to boost the consumer 3D printer market. RepRap ( http:\/\/reprap.org\/ ) is humanity\u2019s first\u00a0general-purpose self-replicating manufacturing machine. RepRap takes the form of a free desktop 3D printer capable\u00a0of printing plastic objects. Since many parts of RepRap are made from plastic and RepRap prints those parts, RepRap\u00a0self-replicates by making a kit of itself. Through RepRap project\u2019s mission to build a self-replicating machine, the first\u00a0desktop 3D printer was born. As more and more manufacturers followed, the consumer 3D printing market took off in<br \/>\n2009.<\/p>\n<p>3D printing is a rapidly developing technology, it has the following benefits:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>It can create complex designs and parts which are not easily created by conventional manufacturing methods.<\/li>\n<li>It allows to customize every item to user\u2019s requirement without additional manufacturing costs.<\/li>\n<li>It does not need for tools and moulds, so it requires lower fixed costs.<\/li>\n<li>It is speedy and cost effective for quick prototyping.<\/li>\n<li>There is less waste in the materials.<br \/>\nComparing with the conventional manufacturing, 3D printing currently has the following limitations:<\/li>\n<li>It needs higher cost for large quantity production.<\/li>\n<li>There are fewer options in terms of materials, colours and finishes.<\/li>\n<li>Parts printed by 3D printers are often weaker than the traditional manufactured parts due to the layer-by-layer\u00a0process.<\/li>\n<li>3D printing technology has a precision limit based on the layer thickness, at the moment it cannot print objects requiring very fine details, for instance, the iPhone switch.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/intranet.birmingham.ac.uk\/it\/innovation\/documents\/public\/Experiments\/3D-printing-technology-overview.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Read full article\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>3D printing is an additive manufacturing process which creates a physical object from a digital design. It involves\u00a0using layers of material, building the structures through construction of layers of materials to grow the structure from\u00a0bottom upwards. 3D printing technology has been around for quite a while, however, recently it has expanded its\u00a0usage into many different &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/itinnovation\/2017\/01\/18\/3d-printingtechnology-overview\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;3D Printing Technology Overview&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":96,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-182","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-3d-printing","category-projects"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/itinnovation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/itinnovation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/itinnovation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/itinnovation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/96"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/itinnovation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/itinnovation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":439,"href":"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/itinnovation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182\/revisions\/439"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/itinnovation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/itinnovation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/itinnovation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}