Form 2 Engineering Materials
The Form 2 3D printer offers professional-level 3D printing at a lower barrier to entry relative to industrial SLA machines. It is capable of producing detailed models with smooth surface finish, making it a sound solution for iterative prototyping, fixtures and manufacturing tooling. The Form 2 currently has 6 engineering grade materials in its portfolio, each with their own unique characteristics and benefits and they include . . . • Grey Pro Resin is a versatile material great for concept modeling and functional prototyping. It offers high precision with moderate elongation and low creep. • Rigin Resin is a glass filled resin that offers very high stiffness. Great for printing thin walls and features, it is highly resistant to deformation over time and provides a polished finish. • Durable Resin specializes in low friction and wear, making it ideal for bearings, ball & joints, and snap-fits. It offers smooth glossy finish and high resistance to deformation. • High Temp Resin has the highest heat deflection temperature of 289 C and can be used for models with environmental testing, or molds for casting and thermoforming. • Flexible Resin is best used for parts with ergonomic features that bend and compress. It can simulate soft-touch [...]
Formlabs Introduces Ceramic Resin and Changes Everything
Formlabs formally recently announced a new ceramic resin for the Form 2 3D printer. This is a notable departure from their traditional materials, which have up to now been various types of photopolymers. While they’ve marketed strong, flexible and colorful materials, they’ve never released a ceramic resin, until now. Ceramic 3D prints are highly desirable in a number of situations, and are produced in quite a different manner. The Form 2’s normal photopolymer process simply involves solidifying the liquid resin with a laser and curing the completed print in a UV bath, ceramic processing requires different steps. Formlabs explains that the ceramic resin is first 3D printed in the same manner, although they do provide a number of tips to ensure a more reliable result, such as adjusting designs to fit within ceramic tolerances and roughening the build platform for extra special adhesiveness. The differences are after the print completes. The “green” part is removed from the Form 2, and supports are trimmed off. There is no need for further UV curing, as the print then is placed in a ventilated kiln. I should point out that Formlabs does not supply a kiln, and you should be able to find one from many [...]
Jewelry Customization with 3D Printing
Founded in 1933, leading German wedding ring manufacturer egf Manufaktur is shortening the feedback loop between designer and customer tenfold, blending a custom software solution with desktop digital fabrication to create a modern, highly personalized customer experience. “Every wedding ring is individualized and made-to-order. They’re more important than any other jewelry product in showing the customer’s individual ideas,” said Nick-Maximilian Binder, assistant to the managing director at egf, and leader of the on-site 3D printing project. “That's why it only makes sense to configure a ring in CAD software, print in 3D, and give it to the customer before the ring is hand-crafted by the goldsmith. We find that customers want to modify the original ring to make it either thicker or narrower, or with varying stone settings.” Egf was awarded the quality certificate of the Jewelry Technology Institute of the University of Applied Sciences Pforzheim. To get up and running with little experience in 3D printing, egf turned to Formlabs Form 2 desktop 3D printer. “The Form 2 excited us the most with its speed—less than one hour for printing our rings, the high quality its resins, and ease of use,” Binder said. The company customized their CAD software so that employees, seated [...]
Making Additive Manufacturing Sustainable and Inclusive
Rize recently hosted a live Webinar called "How to Make Additive Manufacturing Sustainable and Inclusive." The goal of this webinar was to help users of additive manufacturing better understand how to drive increased sustainability and inclusivity in their manufacturing operations and why that’s so important. The discussion focused on how Rize’s patented Augmented Polymer Deposition (APD) hybrid process enables sustainability and inclusivity by providing the highest part strength, the fastest time to a functional part and a safe and sustainable working environment. You can watch a recording of this Webinar by simply clicking on the image below. For more information on the Rize One 3D printer, please click the button below. More Info
Differences Between Scan-Based and CAD-Based Neutral Files
Scan-based files involve cleaning up the scan, optimizing the mesh quality, and ensuring that the scanned mesh is watertight. At this point we can generate the neutral file based on this processed scan data. CAD-based is bit more labor intensive. It involves interrogating the mesh, creating CAD sketches and CAD features and fitting them to match the scanned data. Once the scanned data has been recreated as CAD data, we can then generate the neutral file based on the final CAD geometry. Let’s analyze the differences between the two. The main difference between these two approaches is that a CAD-based neutral file is able to preserve the true geometric features of the scanned part. This means that a cylinder would remain a true cylinder. The same would apply for planar faces, cones, and spheres. This would allow you to create and leverage construction geometry, such as planes, axes, and faces. Being a true CAD shape, any sharp edges on the original part would also be preserved. In summary, if you are looking to preserve geometric features, use the file for 2-axis machining on prismatic parts, or plan on modifying a neutral file in CAD, a CAD-based neutral file would be the best option. [...]
Rize Launches Rizium One Black Material
Rize recently announced the immediate availability of their new Rizium™ One Black material. Like their existing Rizium One material, Rizium One Black provides mechanical properties that mimic injection molded plastic parts, including isotropic strength. The parts are also watertight, have a high HDT, can be sterilized and provide chemical resistance to acid, acetone, alcohol and more. In addition, parts made with Rizium One Black provide the same zero-post-processing capability as parts made with Rizium One, for fast, easy, clean and safe support removal with your hands immediately following printing. Rizium One Black is also safe and recyclable, so you can produce functional black parts in an office, tool room, on the production floor or in the field. Whether you use Rizium One or Rizium One Black for your functional parts, Rize’s APD additive manufacturing redefines the user and customer experience to scale the technology to an entirely new segment of commercial and industrial users. For more information on Rize 3D printers, please click the button below. More Info