3D printing has taken the world by storm. 3D Printing has
become a more popular terminology these days for additive manufacturing
process. Additive manufacturing process has been in existence for a few decades
now and focused mainly for developing rapid prototypes of parts. With the
advancement of technology, the additive printing machines have become much
smaller and portable, which has helped it gain much popularity. There are hobby
‘3D printers’ available from several manufacturers now which can be connected
to desktop computers and user can print parts just as they print a document.
Sounds so simple, isn’t it?
Additive manufacturing is a process which slices the
geometry of the part into layers and then builds it layer by layer. So it is
radically different from the conventional manufacturing processes involving
removal of material. The user is able to print complex shapes using additive
manufacturing which otherwise would require expensive tooling to produce or
even impossible to manufacture using conventional manufacturing processes. People
have been talking about printing an entire aeroplane using 3D printing. Also,
in medical science, there are predictions that 3D printers will be able to
print human organs using stem cells as the input material!
Does it mean that all you ever knew about manufacturing is
about to change forever? Nope.
The accuracy of the parts printed using 3D printers depends
upon geometry of part and operator expertise.
The parts often require finishing operations after printing to achieve
the required accuracy. There are two major reasons for this. One is that the
user needs to fine tune the printer settings for the part to be printed. It needs
a lot of trial & error in using the printer for printing various shapes. The geometry of the part is a critical factor in
determining accuracy and quality of finish of the printed part. There are some
design criteria followed in conventional manufacturing process which need to be
followed for parts to be 3D printed as well. If the part has features such as
thin wall cross sections, negative draft , the part cannot be printed properly.
Attempt to print such parts result in defective or damaged parts which leads to
loss of material, time and money. Hence it is essential to validate the part design
to check if the part can be printed using 3D printing.
3D printing is surely the future of manufacturing. But when it
comes to product design, conventional best practices will still continue to
exist. Some of them apply directly while some need to be tweaked for 3D
printing process.
Let us look at some of the design rules which can help make
parts 3D printing friendly in the next blog.
