3D Printing

We look forward to sharing timelapse captures of our builds so you can see how the printer layers different coloured wires to build shapes to order.

Here is a small boat being made, which is a preloaded model in our printer library.

What followed this sample was an impressive ship which used four different colour reels.

Here you can see the end result of a much grander model which used the colours black, white, green, and red.

The original design requested black, white, yellow, and red for the print. However, before the print would begin it requested green intake from the external spool mounted to the printer, hence this end result.

As we learn more about why this was, we will update this case study. Do you know?

By way of comparison, here is the print near the beginning and the very first layers of the structure in position.

3D printing is a manufacturing process that creates physical objects layer by layer from a digital model, allowing rapid prototyping and custom production across industries.

For the vast majority of 3D printers – especially the common FDM (Fused Deposition Modelling) machines – the feedstock is thermoplastic filament, a spool of plastic that looks like wire but is not metal. It is heated and extruded through a nozzle to build the object layer by layer.

Specialised industrial metal printers use actual metal wire as feedstock, such as our Additive Manufacturing projects and product lines.

By way of example, here at the mid-way point we can see the lattice effect used by the printer to build some structures.

In 3D printing, the “trellis effect” refers to using lattice‑like, open structural patterns, to create lightweight, strong, and visually decorative prints. They also improve print speed due to less dense geometry.

The method serves to reduce weight whilst maintaining structural integrity. These complex geometries and cell-like structures provide load support whilst reducing the material (in this case filament) intake of a product whilst remaining lightweight and also providing flexibility where required.

Open frameworks also allow airflow or visual transparency where required and can produce modular interlocking structures that can be expanded or customized.

Here we can see the white wire being layered in a solid format for this part of the print as it begins to occlude the green trellis beneath it. The printer is “capping” the lattice.

“A lattice is made of thin struts and open cells, and those struts only self‑support when they stay within roughly 45° of vertical.”

advises Greatlight Rapid Manufacturing.

Here’s the full clip of the Ship being built.

The reason it’s in multiple parts is because it’s designed to slot together and break-away to demonstrate a ship hitting an iceberg.

Shortfalls regarding 3D Printing include:

• The use of land & water hungry, and loud, Data Centres to generate content and to participate in large-scale learning.
• The use of non-recyclable plastic as a raw material for the wire.

It’s good to see that AI and its developers appear to be adapting to using local and distributed networks to reduce dependence on high-powered and energy-intensive data centres and that some suppliers are offering 3D printing wire that is made of recycled plastic in the first instance.

Ensuring that recycled plastic is free of contaminants and toxic chemicals is a further consideration which needs to be ensured.

3D Printing comes into its own when it comes to R&D as a way of providing the potential to test an idea before going into production in earnest. It is not for lack of trying that those tasked to conduct feasibility studies for demo-rigs, prototypes, and machines are at times unable to secure the mechanical input required.

The shortfall was created by the skillset being declined on a national level in recent decades which means that those still in practice are often inundated with backlogs of work. This in turn impacts the smaller design and engineering companies which may not be able to access their expertise. At such times, 3D Printing ability provides a way of proving a concept in-house, as well as being able to create workable pieces.

It would of course be great to see a resurgence of mechanical factories where mind-palaces mock-up and build parts in materials such as steel in the first instance which do not provide the added quandary of recycling capacity to the job specification at hand. Now is a great time to jump back into our R&D Case Study!

Here’s a very interesting clip from Engineezy of a 3D printed mechanism showing inter-locking dials producing great speeds of revolution! See what you think!

The movement of one dial influences the movement of the subsequent dial creating a multiplicative effect on the final output.

-McMaster-Carr

This is a demonstration of gearing, with gear-ratios being a fundamental aspect of industrial machinery. In turn, the gear-ratio determines how speed and torque are transmitted.

A gear ratio is the relationship between two meshed gears, defined by dividing the number of teeth on the driven gear by the number of teeth on the driver gear. Meanwhile, torque refers to a force that tends to cause rotation.