It's been around 3 months since we started offering in house 3D printed prototypes. The rationale behind launching the service was to support those in our customer base that are constantly innovating and coming up with new and exciting products. Our aim was to help customers cut their development times and give them realistic samples of their extrusions on a fast & free basis.
Well, the results are in - it's a hit. Since purchasing our printer we've created more than 30 models for new and existing customers who have given lots of positive feedback about the service. For some it has given them the confidence in their design to proceed in laying down tooling and a couple are now in possession of the bulk material from their first extrusion order.
We've managed to achieve dimensional accuracy of around +/- 0.2mm with our first printer and a fairly consistent procedure for producing CAD models, exporting files, and getting them printed to a reasonably quality. All that said we had some issues with the reliability of the print process and consistency of the settings, of course we only ever dished out the best quality prints but we were wasting lots of time getting to the best result.
Our biggest issues were:
We figured that their must be a better way. Another challenge was that we could only produce samples 130mm tall and as you all know in the extrusion world length of the sample is an important factor. Time for an upgrade.
It's much easier to operate as the manufacturers have created an entire ecosystem around the product, from print materials to a software package for slicing 3D models in the best way for the model of printer we have. It recognises what material is loaded and adjusts its own settings to suit.
The results are superb, much better quality models with tighter dimensional accuracy and so far a 100% success rate in terms of print completion. We haven't lost any models. No warping or elephants foot it is fantastic. We've spent a great deal of time printing of extrusion prototypes for an aluminium greenhouse being designed in house for our garden buildings business, Norfolk Greenhouses. The new models are perfect, we've encorporated screw ports, holes, miters, and more. We've successfully modeled a cut down model of the frame, eaves, roof and door to our new greenhouse.
We are currently preparing the formal launch of our new service, now that initial trials have successfully completed. We will be offering free 3D prototypes to anyone that approaches with a project they would like developed and costed. Keep your eyes on the blog for more information.
Had any similar problems or novel 3D printing ideas? Comment below.