Efforts are underway to quicken 3D printing machine build operation.  And it’s more than just improving the back end operations.

Recently 3D Systems announced that the “productivity” of its fab-grade 3D printers (Stereolithography (SLA®) and Selective Laser Sintering (SLS®) manufacturing printers) is now as fast or faster than traditional injection molding. The claim is that these 3D printers are fast enough to compete with injection molding in many applications. While size and complexity of the part play a key role in any claims of speed, that is still quite a claim.

I asked 3D Systems how they managed this feat and they are using two methods:

–adding more lasers

–adding lasers with a larger aperture allowing a larger beam to bind or print a wider area of material.

At the recent RAPID show in Detroit, ExOne gave a press conference at which COO and President David Burns mentioned that the company’s additive manufacturing machines are now faster than earlier versions. I asked him how they achieved the speed increase and he mentioned three factors:

–data transmission, the company engineers found ways to improve the flow of the part slicing data to machine controls. Apparently, data transmission from the file to the machine controller was slower than the company’s machines can handle. Now, data are flowing at faster rates, enabling the machines to print faster.

–better nozzles. The size of the deposition nozzles greatly affects how fast an object can be built. It affects tolerance and finish too, but if it can be increased a bit, more material can be solidified or deposited at a time.

–better motion control. Better motion control components, including motors and higher accuracy encoders reduce jitter and other motion issues, enabling faster speeds.

Thus, so far, additive machine manufacturers have been able to gain incremental improvements in speed, primarily with tweaks to the overall system. We have not had a breakthrough technology yet that takes build speed to a whole new level. But what if we did have such a breakthrough?

Just how fast do 3D printers and additive manufacturing systems really need to be?

They have already sped up the time it takes to get prototypes from weeks to hours, depending on the part. And even in final, end-use part build, the build time can be as few as a couple of hours.

Given that 3DP/AM is so well suited to those designs that cannot be produced any other way, I’m not sure high speed is a really critical feature. Sure, as HP CEO Meg Whitman noted, watching a 3D printer operate is as exciting “as watching ice melt.”

And, improvements can certainly be made to speed things up. Some improvements may not even add that much additional cost to these systems.

But just how fast should 3DP/AM systems get? What is the desired goal?

Leslie Langnau
llangnau@wtwhmedia.com