What industry can 3D printing be applied to?

3D printing is very popular in recent years, from the initial military, high-precision and other large-scale industrial applications to the civilianization of 3D printing. So what exactly is 3D printing? What's the different between ordinary printing? As we all know, ordinary printing is to display the data to be printed on 2D paper, using ink, toner and other consumables. But 3D printing is to print a physical object.

In order to print 3D solid objects, we first need to build the model of the object to be printed through the 3D modeling software of the computer,and slice them, and transfer the sliced data to the 3D printer. The 3D printer will print the 3D object layer by layer according to the slice data, and finally form the physical object. The consumables of 3D printers are mainly determined by the printing technology, so what are the main consumables we generally use when printing?

1. The main consumables using fused deposition rapid prototyping technology are ABS and PLA

The consumables of the fused deposition rapid prototyping process are generally thermoplastic materials, such as ABS, PLA, etc, using filamentous substitutes, The printing material is melted by heating in the nozzle, and the nozzle moves along with the cross-section profile of the parts. At the same time, the melted material is extruded and quickly solidified at room temperature. The printing technology is used to pile up from bottom to top, and the upper layer plays a role of positioning and supporting the current layer.

2. SLA-photocurable resin

This technology is the earliest 3D printing technology that is a rapid prototyping process based on the principle of photopolymerization of liquid photosensitive resin. The material changes from liquid to solid state rapidly through photopolymerization under ultraviolet light of certain wavelength and intensity. Light curing molding is the most mature technology of 3D printing, and the layer thickness can be controlled at about 0.1mm, so the precision of the molded product is high. The new one can use a high-resolution digital light processor projector to cure the material, and the material properties, details and finish of the new technology can be compared with injection-molded parts.

3. SLS-powder materials

SLS technology is to spread the material powder on the upper surface of the formed parts, and quickly smooth, using high intensity laser on the new layer and scan the section of the parts, the powder is sintered together under high intensity laser irradiation to obtain a section of the parts, and bonded with below formed part. When the cross-section of one layer is sintered, a new layer of material powder is laid, and the cross-section of the lower layer is selectively sintered.

After years of development, 3D printing has been applied in more and more fields, and now it has long-term applications in jewelry, footwear, construction, automobiles, aviation, medical and other fields. 3D printing technology will be closer to our lives and can be applied in more fields.