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AM Primer - Polymers
56 Plays2 years ago
Dive deep into the world of additive manufacturing as we unravel the mysteries of polymers! In this series, we break down the basics, exploring how these versatile materials are transforming industries through 3D printing. From the science behind their composition to their vast applications, join us on a journey to understand why polymers are the backbone of modern additive manufacturing. Whether you're a seasoned engineer or just curious about the future of production, Alain from i3D offers insights for everyone. Tune in and discover the boundless potential of polymers in 3D printing!
Thank-you to our sponsor, i3D.
http://www.invent-innovate-inspire.com/
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Transcript
Introduction to Podcast and Guest
00:00:11
Speaker
Hello, everybody. Thanks again for joining us for the Alberta Additive Manufacturing Network Podcast. Today, we have a really special guest with us and we're going to be talking about polymers. And like I said in the previous podcast, we're going to be exploring multiple different facets of AM 3D printing and the benefits of each and how they can be used in your design.
00:00:38
Speaker
So without further ado, I'd like to introduce you to Alan. Alan, thanks for joining us. So let's dive straight in.
Understanding Polymers: Thermoplastics vs Thermosets
00:00:45
Speaker
Polymers, you know, can you give us a little bit of a background for most people, for our listener out there? Polymers typically mean plastics, and there's a whole bunch of different types of plastics. Everyone's, I'm sure, pulled a milk jug out of the fridge. What type of polymers are available to us? And as we talked about,
00:01:05
Speaker
design in one of our previous podcasts and looking at materials. It'd be a great introduction if you could tell us what's available. The quick and easy answer to what is available is almost anything that you can imagine in terms of
00:01:27
Speaker
In terms of the most common plastics that you in fact have ever used, whether it be low density polyethylene that you would use in a milk jug to ABS that you would see being used in Lego.
00:01:44
Speaker
to polycarbon, which is oftentimes used in safety equipment. But that said, I think it may be a benefit to pulling back just a little bit and taking a look at the different types of polymers because there are two very broad categories for polymers.
00:02:07
Speaker
One is what you would call a thermoplastic, and that encompasses that group of plastics that we just talked about, low-density polyethylene, ABS, polycarbon, nylon, just the gamut. If you've heard of plastic, very likely that's the group that it would fall under. On the other hand, there are other
00:02:36
Speaker
polymers called thermosets and thermosets actually have are an entirely different subcategory of plastics or polymers that you probably did hear about but don't necessarily think of them as being polymers, epoxies, duroplast, bakelite, polymers like that. Anyways, so I want to pull back just a little bit because when it comes to additive manufacturing,
00:03:06
Speaker
The type of 3D printing you decide to go with varies dramatically depending on whether or not you're wanting to go with thermoplastics or dealing with thermoplastics or thermosets.
How Does FDM Work in 3D Printing?
00:03:22
Speaker
So I mean for polymer 3D printing for additive manufacturing generally there are a lot of different types of media. There's not just the one. The most common one that you
00:03:34
Speaker
that you've likely seen either in an internet video or at the local retail store is something called fused deposition modeling or FDM printing. And that's a pretty cool thing to watch. It's essentially just a rectangular frame.
00:03:55
Speaker
with a gantry that's mounted overhead with what we call an extruder or a heating element that basically just kind of moves around and it lays plastic layer by layer. And you can pretty much design whatever you want, sky's the limit, some obvious exceptions. And that is FDM, the most popular 3D printing media bar none.
00:04:23
Speaker
But there are others that are out there as well. And those others are typically geared towards dealing with the thermoset type resin plastics or polymers that I just mentioned just a moment ago. So if FDM deals with thermal plastics, the other type of media typically focus on
00:04:47
Speaker
their most set plastics, if that makes sense.
Processing Polymers: Equipment and Techniques
00:04:50
Speaker
Oh, cool. Yeah. Okay. Sorry, I'm just going to interrupt, but for the benefit of our listener out there, it sounds like we're going to be covering machines and different types of equipment in a
00:05:06
Speaker
in another podcast and take it from cradle to crypt really. So equipment, polymers, and post-processing. So just for the benefit of our listener.
00:05:19
Speaker
The raw material that is coming into the piece of equipment is what you're referring to when you're talking about thermosets and those types of materials. From my background, ejection molding, for instance, you start off with resin palettes, but it sounds like you can get a liquid type of
00:05:42
Speaker
you know, material, you can also get a powder based material. So and I think that's where you're going before I cut you off. So sorry, I'm just I'm just a rude, you know, rude host. It bears noting, it bears noting actually that that it's not just a name for the sake of a name.
00:06:03
Speaker
Thermoplastics, they're the ones that you would use in molding usually. And like I said, they're the most common ones that you would use for consumer goods.
00:06:13
Speaker
but they're also used in a wide variety of commercial and industrial applications as well. Thermoplastics are called thermoplastics because what these polymers do essentially is, or what this group of polymers does, allows is for you to be able to heat, melt, fuse and set.
Thermoplastics vs Thermosets: Key Differences
00:06:36
Speaker
And then once it's set, it hardens with the same properties that it started with when it initially was melted. So basically, if you take a really crude example, if you take a pop bottle, which is usually fabricated out of a thermoplastic called polyethylene terephthalate,
00:07:01
Speaker
or PET for short, and you take this pop bottle and you want to recycle it and you can melt it down so long as you do not exceed the heat temperature that's allowable for that particular polymer, you can melt it down and reuse it to make, say, another pop bottle or another item.
00:07:25
Speaker
that's thermoplastics and it'll retain all the essential properties that it began with before you melted it down. So that is a thermoplastic in a nutshell. Thermoset polymers are entirely different. Thermoset plastics
00:07:42
Speaker
They catalyze and they develop their essential properties as you heat them. But once they cool, you cannot reclaim them. They're done. That's it. They retain those properties and they stay in that particular mold or form or whatnot. And once you actually heat them up again,
00:08:06
Speaker
If you want to try to heat them up again to try to reclaim them, actually what you end up doing is you end up burning them, or scorching them, or just essentially destroying them. They do not reform to get back to that previous stage of reusability. That's a pretty important design function, I would imagine, on your finished product, right?
00:08:34
Speaker
machine parameters as well or equipment parameters, right? So different types of technology, different types of material. What would you say is the most popular type of printing out there or most popular polymer used? I wouldn't necessarily hazard a guess as to which is the most popular polymer. Generally, I think that generally, I think you're probably looking at something like a polypropylene
00:09:04
Speaker
which is used almost everywhere in making furniture and all that sort of stuff. But in 3D printing, there are categories that are
00:09:19
Speaker
very popular that are not necessarily thought of as being popular in common usage because of their ease of use. A very common one would be PLA or polylactic acid which is essentially I would consider a beginner's material that
00:09:37
Speaker
is incredibly easy to work with and the layers basically go down flat. The heat requirement is relatively low.
Using PLA in 3D Printing: Pros and Cons
00:09:48
Speaker
You do not require anything like a heat bed or anything like that. It's just a very friendly material to use. But once you start wanting to make
00:09:57
Speaker
functional components that require maybe a little bit more than what PLA is capable of offering, then you start moving into materials like ABS, which I mentioned earlier is most commonly associated with
00:10:18
Speaker
with Lego but it has a lot of industrial applications as well or even PVC, polycarbon, nylons, all sorts of different materials that offer a whole host of different properties and that is one of the benefits of dealing with thermoplastics is that thermoplastics offer you that wide range of different properties that
00:10:43
Speaker
that have been tested, tried and tested in the marketplace and that you're able to adopt, find information on and adopt for your own usage. Oh, cool. Different mechanical properties, just like regular traditional plastics and metals, they're each going to have their own benefits and also drawbacks, I guess.
00:11:08
Speaker
Now, from a technology standpoint, we've got all these different polymers available to us. Let's just pick one, for instance. FDM being, I think, one of the most widely used ones. You can almost pick those up anywhere now. I think Amazon's selling those, even Canadian Tire.
00:11:28
Speaker
The polymers there, they come in like an extruded roll of material. So that PLA material, you know, it's rolled up and kind of extruded through that nozzle, lower temperatures like you're measuring, sorry, like you're mentioning. What can I expect from that? So the different materials exhibit like a different tolerance. Is there some sort of shrinkage? Do we have to account for that in, you know, in the model preparation?
00:11:57
Speaker
So absolutely, it's a very good question. It's a very good observation. When it comes to different materials, you can expect different printing experience. Maybe that's the best way to put it and ultimately
00:12:17
Speaker
performance of the actual model. So let's compare or let's go a little bit deeper into material like PLA. PLA as I mentioned is probably the most common material out there currently being used by 3D printers.
00:12:36
Speaker
The material has a relatively low melting temperature of anywhere between 180 to 210 degrees Celsius. It does not require a heating plate. And a heating plate, I can get into that a little bit later. Generally, it's deemed safe for usage. So if you're extruding 3D printing material like PLA,
00:13:04
Speaker
You don't necessarily have to be concerned about toxic gases or emissions from the extrusion process. And I can go into that a little bit more in just a moment.
00:13:20
Speaker
And like i said it prints out nice and smooth. The performance of the actual material by the time that you're done is you get a hard component that typically if you're going to test it out ends up being fairly brittle as opposed to fairly ductile.
00:13:41
Speaker
So brittle here, it's strong, but if you exceed the amount of pressure on one end or the amount of the tolerances in terms of pressures that you're putting on,
00:13:53
Speaker
or whatnot, it'll crack as opposed to give slightly. It's probably the best way to put it. But at the same time, there are some problems with PLA in that it is probably not the most usable material for functional components. For example, it has a very low glass transition rate.
00:14:15
Speaker
And what I mean by that is a glass transition rate is a temperature at which the material begins to soften. So for example, PLA has a glass transition temperature of say around right around the 90 degree mark. So if you wanted to make a cup,
00:14:32
Speaker
And you wanted to use that cup, you know, and I and I'll actually elaborate on that in just a moment And then and then put that cup in a dishwasher By the time that you bring that the cup out of the dishwasher it has been distorted because it cannot withstand the heat and and it doesn't even have to be that extreme you can actually take a let's say a medallion or say a
00:14:59
Speaker
you know, a neat little bobblehead Yoda that you've printed using your PLA and put it on the dash of your car on a hot summer day. By the time that you come back from the grocery store, because the windows were all done up, by the time that you come back from the grocery store, the chances are pretty good that that bobblehead Yoda is no longer bobbling. In fact, it's probably starting to distort and to be disfigured.
00:15:26
Speaker
So glass transition temperature is a very key consideration when you're looking to make anything that will have to withstand any sort of higher temperature. Just before you go on, I wanted to get back to two other important considerations.
00:15:48
Speaker
I mentioned earlier that PLA is relatively safe and it does not have any toxic emissions, and that's technically true, although it does put off emissions, emissions in the form of ultrafine particles.
00:16:04
Speaker
that if you are exposed too much, they can irritate your lungs. And oftentimes with FDM printing, it's really strongly suggested that you either enclose the printer or make sure at the very least that you're using it in a very well ventilated area.
00:16:26
Speaker
So that's actually one thing that I wanted to point out and then the other I think I wanted to actually just get back to why a heated pad was important because actually this is something that you asked about expansion rates is that different polymers have different rates of thermal linear expansion. Thermal linear expansion is essentially a reference to how much a material will expand when it is subjected to heat because it'll expand and it'll contract.
00:16:54
Speaker
And so PLA is actually relatively neutral. So it actually does not expand very much up until the 210 degree mark. It does expand a little bit because most materials do. But because of that limited range of thermolinear expansion, you can actually print on a
00:17:17
Speaker
on a non-heated pad and not be worried about any sort of distortions or warping or cracking or whatnot from the first layer. So hopefully that makes a little bit of sense. Probably could elaborate a little bit more on that. But yeah. So yeah. That's perfect. That's a difference. So what I got out of that is if you don't want goulash and you want a grogo or baby Yoda,
00:17:46
Speaker
Make sure you got your settings right. Make sure you're choosing the right material. And if you're using PLA, make sure you take Grogu with you into the grocery store. Otherwise, you'll come back and see Gulash on the dashboard. That's kind of neat. You talked a lot about Bose polymers, and I'm assuming those would really lend themselves well to FDM or FFF.
00:18:11
Speaker
you know, different types of technology.
FDM vs Resin Printers: Which is Better?
00:18:14
Speaker
Now, what about some of the resin printers? One of the things we've noticed is, you know, depending on the printer and the cost and accuracy, FDM typically leaves a lot of layers. And, you know, if you're printing an ABS, you can do like a vapor smoothing. But, you know, with an SLA process and resins,
00:18:38
Speaker
There's some advantages there, and I'm sure some disadvantages. Would you mind educating our listener and seeing if we can get some fundamentals across? Sure. So before I get into that, let's just step back just a little bit to FDM and FFF, as you mentioned, which is essentially just two acronyms that essentially mean the exact same process for our listeners.
00:19:09
Speaker
There is actually also FGF, which is actually interesting because it is actually gaining in popularity. It's very similar in terms of the technology being used, the gantry, the extruder and whatnot using the same types of plastics, thermoplastics, except that actually instead of purchasing
00:19:40
Speaker
a spool of extruded filament in order to feed through your 3D printer. The technology makes use of a hopper that can actually make use of the virgin pellets that oftentimes are used to create the filament in the first place.
00:20:04
Speaker
It actually sidesteps a middle step in terms of the creation of the filament of the plastic for 3D printing. But in the process, the added benefit is that a lot of these FGF
00:20:19
Speaker
printers are much faster than most of the FDM printers. And that's actually one of the drawbacks to the FDM FFF printers is that yes, it is incredibly cost effective. Yes, it is cool. Yes, it has the ability to tap into a very versatile line of thermoplastics.
00:20:47
Speaker
On the other hand, the problem is that it is slow. It is mechanical, it is pulling back and forth and up and down of essentially a mechanical device that is being pulled by stepper motors and belts. And so the process is actually very slow, comparative to other media that are currently out there. So with that said,
00:21:16
Speaker
I will actually touch on the other types of media that are out there. The other media that are out there currently don't really use stepper motors and gantries and whatnot. What they make use of instead are lasers.
00:21:33
Speaker
If you think lasers, you're thinking, hey, that's really super cool. It's fricking cool. I was just about to say, FGM, that sounds like frigging cool, man. Or, you know, FGF frigging cool friend.
00:21:52
Speaker
So FGF is awesome. And actually, you know what, before I get into SLA, I'll also point out that your point about the layered look of a particular build or whatnot is an important consideration. And I don't want to get too much into that for a few things, because number one,
00:22:14
Speaker
It actually touches on it touches a lot on on the actual design aspect. And I believe that there's there's somebody else is actually speaking about design and the various and the various considerations when you actually put a design in and when you take that design and then you go through and you and you use the machine to slice the design. And so and so slicing and I'll give you a little note on this. The slicing aspect is when is when a is when a program takes your model. So you design, say, you know, a cup.
00:22:44
Speaker
And then you take that cup and then what you do with this with this with this slicing program is it essentially slices it into 100 or 200 or 300 little slices and they converge those slices into into into G code which is a which is a CNC machine code is what it is. And then from there the machine basically just traces out the layers
00:23:12
Speaker
by according to the requirements and the settings that you've selected right so if you choose to make your cup and you and picture a cup and then you slice it 100 times and you've actually made some pretty thick slices but if you slice it 500 times and you've reduced you've reduced the the layers and so you've made it so that the entire the entire process actually or the entire
00:23:35
Speaker
And our layer process is actually very, very fine. So fine layers versus thick layers. But then the trade-off is, of course, is that if the layers are too thick, then you end up with a rougher-looking cup. And so those considerations are very important in the design consideration.
00:23:58
Speaker
but they're also important in the post-processing consideration. Post-processing is a talk that I'd actually like to go into at a later time. I will not talk at length on that, but it is something that needs to be considered for sure when you're going through and doing a 3D print. Totally. Our list is going to be so educated after this. He's going to be an expert, or she, depending on who our listener is.
00:24:27
Speaker
Well, I very much hope so and I think actually at the beginning I offered the opportunity to anyone having any further questions to please reach out and I'd be happy to overwhelm them as much as possible with further information.
00:24:43
Speaker
Perfect, thank you. Now that said, launching right into SLA. So I mentioned that the fundamental difference with say something like FDM and that polymerization
00:25:00
Speaker
is what we're going to call it because it's actually a group of technologies that actually all essentially deal with very much the same type of resin material is that essentially what you're doing is you're using a laser. And the laser, as you can imagine, number one is a lot faster.
00:25:16
Speaker
It is much, much faster because it's not being dragged around by belts and a conveyance system and a gantry and whatnot. It's basically just a beam of light that's being directed by a galvanimo.
00:25:32
Speaker
galvanometer and it's basically tracing the model layer by layer. So the laser is, like I said, it's not moving. It's basically just in one place and the laser beam itself is being moved around by way of a mirror. Essentially the galvanometer is essentially a very neat way of saying it's a mirror.
SLA vs DLP: Speed and Precision in 3D Printing
00:25:56
Speaker
Because of that, number one, like I said, it's a lot faster. And number two, as you can imagine, because of the fact that you're using a laser as opposed to a mechanical extruder that is going through layer by layer, the actual process itself, it actually opens itself up to a lot more
00:26:15
Speaker
to a lot finer resolution. So not only is it generally faster, but it is also a much finer process. So by the time that you're done doing a print, you may see some of the layered effect, but generally speaking, it is a very, very, very fine
00:26:40
Speaker
finish as opposed to FDM. I say that polymerization as opposed to just simply SLA because it does encompass a whole series of different types of technologies. SLA is one type of technology, that's the one where I just said
00:26:59
Speaker
where you just take a laser and you basically redirect it using a mirror and you trace out your model. There's also DLP where somebody basically conceived of the idea that what if we introduce the UV radiation
00:27:19
Speaker
and did it layer by layer as opposed to trace it out like an FDM. So instead of a laser, they use a projector, a UV projector, and they basically take a snapshot, like a picture of each layer, and then they move on to the next one, and then the next one, and the next one. So DLP is faster yet than SLA. The disadvantage is that is the cost
00:27:47
Speaker
of DLP for larger units and to do larger builds becomes very, very high to the point where, in fact, actually, if you wanted to have a – actually, I'm kind of skipping around here and I apologize for that.
00:28:06
Speaker
because I don't want to get too much into the equipment, but if you wanted to have a DLP printer that is the size of some of the SLA printers, the commercial SLA printers that are almost a full meter by full meter in terms of build size, you actually need multiple projectors to accomplish the same task as the SLA printer can. So that's if we want a full-size baby Yoda.
00:28:29
Speaker
Yes, exactly right. I just want to pull back for just a little bit because I actually made use of UV and that's a new idea that's just been injected into the middle of the entire conversation.
00:28:50
Speaker
In point, actually what I should have led with is that the SLA process requires that the laser not just be some kind of laser like you would picture in say maybe Star Wars or Star Trek or something like that, but instead actually what the laser does is it introduces a UV laser. It introduces UV radiation that actually catalyzes the polymer resin.
00:29:16
Speaker
And by catalyzing, I essentially mean it kind of like bake, if you will, or harden or cause to harden the resin. And so, like I said, the process itself is very, very quick, but it's actually done through UV radiation. It's not done through, you know, just, you know,
00:29:34
Speaker
heating. The reason why I mentioned that is because there are different types of lasers used in additive manufacturing. We're not going to get into this right now, but the type of laser that actually is used for metal is actually heating a laser. It is actually melting metal. This is not melting. This is causing to catalyze. It's very different, so it requires a lot less power. With the catalyzing then, are you starting with a
00:30:00
Speaker
a liquid material? Are you starting with some small powder or pallets? That's a good question. Resonance is always a liquid and it's usually fairly viscous liquid. That's how you go. Actually, I'm going to go back to powder in just half a moment because I think that that's an important segue.
00:30:24
Speaker
The resin is always a liquid, and one of the drawbacks to that polymerization, the SLA technology, believe it or not, is SLA is actually the first
00:30:41
Speaker
3D printing technology to have actually been developed back in the 80s. But it was shelved for lots of reasons and then they started to look at it again. The thing is that actually when it comes down to resins, if you compare resins to thermal plastics in terms of availability of materials and the properties that are available and so forth, currently resins are an incredible disadvantage. There are hundreds of
00:31:10
Speaker
of thermoplastics and maybe dozens instead of UV catalyzing resins that can be used for 3D printing. But that said, the growing popularity of SLA printing and the benefits that it offers has made it so that there's a tremendous amount of research being done now in the development of resins. So you're seeing a lot of resins
00:31:37
Speaker
that are currently being produced that are able to mimic the properties of very common thermoplastics like in fact, you know, ABS and so forth. And now you're also seeing the development of resins that are very industry specific and going slightly beyond what thermoplastics are capable of offering.
00:32:05
Speaker
So there are a lot of companies out there right now that are producing resins that are going directly into auto production and that sort of thing. They're being actually 3D printed and they're going directly into vehicles. So there's a lot of development in that area. And it definitely is, I would say between the two, FDM and SLA or VAT polymerization for polymer 3D printing,
00:32:31
Speaker
The VAT polymerization offers far more commercial benefits, largely because of the speed and size and whatnot than FDM. But that said, it's definitely a growing industry. That should help with costs, then, because typically we've seen FDM material. That's the one in the spool. Resins are, from my experience,
00:33:00
Speaker
two and a half to three times more expensive. And it sounds like that's just going to get better. So that's great. It is. And the other thing as well is you have to be very careful not to, you have to be a little bit careful when you're comparing resin costs to resin costs. So right now, one of the most common
00:33:26
Speaker
resin printers that are currently out there is is a printer put out by I'm drawing a blank form labs what's it called form two yeah form three form form to form three and their and their price to be
00:33:47
Speaker
affordable by individual users and if you take a look at the resin costs for their printers typically when you compare it to say thermal plastics it's actually relatively high. On the other hand
00:34:02
Speaker
commercial resin printers, oftentimes you can get 10 kilo vats of resin for a price that ranges from say $20 to $30 Canadian. And the number of components that you can get out of that is, in terms of production,
00:34:24
Speaker
is very, very high. So there's a big difference between the consumer resin pricing and commercial resin pricing. So just maybe keep that in mind. And I think that that's true of any industry, really, that when you're doing something for consumers, typically it's a little bit more expensive than if you buy in bulk for commercial purposes. Oh, yeah, absolutely.
00:34:50
Speaker
Cool. Do you want to, do you think? Oh, sorry, I actually wanted to, sorry, sorry. I apologize there. There was one segue that you actually had. You mentioned powder.
Exploring SLS Technology: Benefits and Applications
00:35:00
Speaker
Yeah. And you actually mentioned, you mentioned powder a couple of different times. And it is incredibly important that I actually touch base on powder. So there is in fact, a powder media that is available. And it's generally referred to as SLS or selective laser sintering.
00:35:19
Speaker
And in this process, I said earlier that in polymers that you're using a UV to you're using, sorry, you're using a laser to introduce UV radiation. In this one, you're actually not in this one, you're actually you're actually melting. And in fact, actually, what it's doing is it's it's taking a very, very, very fine powdered thermoplastic
00:35:39
Speaker
And generally, as of right now, most often the type of powder is nylon, although I believe as well that there is a polypropylene powder that's available and a couple of other ones that some manufacturers have actually been producing. But in any case, here the laser is actually
00:36:02
Speaker
far, far more like a metal laser is actually it's not really melting because centering actually is not really melting, but it is heating up to just the right point of being able to allow the nylon to fuse. And so you have this laser that traces out the
00:36:27
Speaker
the model and creates a 3D print using a powdered process. So you'd be correct to ask the questions, well, okay, so what's the difference? Well, the difference is that on the one hand, you have the advantage of not having to reign yourself to the mechanical gantry that I was mentioning earlier and the whole mechanical process
00:36:57
Speaker
that FDM or FFF basically uses. And that whole process slows it down. And so on the other hand, you actually can use thermoplastics and not be shackled by the limitations of FDM.
00:37:13
Speaker
On the other hand, there's also some added benefits to the whole powdered process. So imagine if you will, and this is going back over to design considerations a little bit, so I'll touch on it just a little bit. Imagine for a moment that you wanted to 3D print a cup. Well, so you have this plate and you decide you're going to build a cup. Well, you can actually probably, if your build plate is big enough, you can probably
00:37:38
Speaker
You can probably line multiple cups, one beside the other and then print them in one print. And of course, for FDM, it'll just take you a little bit longer, but you'll build these cups. However, there is
00:37:58
Speaker
not just an X and a Y axis, but there's also a Z axis. So if suddenly you found yourself in a position where... Sorry, actually, let me pull back. You cannot use the Z beyond the limitations of the actual model. So the model, if your cup is three inches high, that's how big your model is going to be.
00:38:18
Speaker
SLS actually can can can can go beyond that slightly, because what it can do is because of the way that the other the whole process works what it does is that is that your brushes a very fine layer of powder onto a onto a build plate.
00:38:34
Speaker
The laser goes through and it actually traces it out. It traces it out and it causes the first layer to center together, to fuse together. And then you have a brush that basically comes along and it actually brushes yet another layer.
00:38:50
Speaker
of powder, and then it does the exact same thing and it keeps building and keeps building. Okay, so you can actually do four cups side by side, if you want, but actually at some point, you'll actually reach the very top of your print. But guess what, you've actually essentially created a semi platform for yourself with all the powder. So what you can actually do is build upwards as well. So instead of having say four cups,
00:39:14
Speaker
at the bottom only stopping the print and starting over again, you can actually build up and take up the entire Z axis as well. So you can actually fill up the entire build of volume with whatever it is that you're building. So that's actually one of those benefits of SLS that actually is giving a lot of manufacturers pause to see what they can do in terms of maximizing the utility of that particular technology.
00:39:41
Speaker
Lots of benefits there if it's applied properly. One of the companies that actually is really, believe it or not, experimenting with SLS technology or similar type of technology is IKEA. They're pretty big on the development of artistic type products using additive processes.
00:40:05
Speaker
And one of the things that they've done is they've actually gone pretty heavy into powder printing, specifically because of that, because of the volume that you can actually build using the type of technology medium. Sorry. Oh, no, that's great. So for our listener out there, I think we've touched on, wow, quite a few different materials, pretty much all the polymers, I would imagine.
00:40:33
Speaker
Again, if you're wanting to get into some specifics, thank you so much, Alan, for offering up some time. Talking about IKEA, a lot of what they do is they mass produce their product.
Additive vs Traditional Manufacturing: A Comparison
00:40:51
Speaker
From a prototype perspective, most people gravitate towards additive manufacturing.
00:40:58
Speaker
to get their design out as quickly as possible. And it sounds like IKEA is taking a sort of hybrid approach. And most of us in the traditional manufacturing world look at injection molding. Now, you know, there's the sort of break even where X amount of 3D printed parts is going to basically cost the same as paying for an injection mold.
00:41:24
Speaker
and then a run of product. In my experience, we've typically seen that be as low as 150 pieces and sometimes as high as 10,000 pieces. Lead time, I guess, is one of those things, and there's a whole bunch of different
00:41:41
Speaker
types of considerations in that. We've seen a whole bunch of stuff on the internet with FDM, and you've really gone through the different types of polymers that are available. Have you seen success stories where companies like Nokia have decided to just stick with AEM versus going the injection molding route?
00:42:01
Speaker
Oh, I think it's varied. I think you can have the same company have success in following both and make it so that it's very much product specific. And you know what? I think a lot of people, even though I'm an advocate, a very strong advocate for additive technologies generally,
00:42:26
Speaker
traditional manufacturing methods have had almost a hundred years to develop and they are incredibly good at what they do. And to try to take away from that is foolish. So injection molding, absolutely, is probably the fastest, cheapest way to produce or to mass produce plastic components bar none.
00:42:53
Speaker
The cost consideration though, and if I had a picture that I could show you, I would, the difference fundamentally between AM and TM can be demonstrated in two very simple graphs.
00:43:15
Speaker
one graph for traditional manufacturing. And this is not only having to do with injection molding, this is having to do with any traditional manufacturing where setup is required. Where you start up high and then you end up very low. So you start up with initial costs that are very high, but based on the number of items that you produce, you basically reduce your cost.
00:43:42
Speaker
So it's like a slope and that slope can be very, very steep going down or it can be very, very gradual going down. It really depends on the product. It starts out much lower than the initial product cost or the initial setup costs for TM, but it's very flat. You don't really get much of a variance in terms of costing because you have the initial design
00:44:08
Speaker
process for whatever it is that you're looking to 3D print. And then once you've done that and you're slicing and you're printing, really the differences in terms of costing are very, very slight because you're not going to speed up the time. You're not producing anything specific or special to actually produce the product, anything like that. You're just feeding it to the printer and the printer's going through and it's actually going to print it. It's going to be printed the same thing over and over again.
00:44:35
Speaker
time after time, and it's going to be the same cost. And at some point, the cost of doing that with additive manufacturing, the cost of making the same product with traditional manufacturing will meet, you'll get that point, at which case the cost is essentially exactly the same, but past that point, the more that you produce with traditional manufacturing,
00:45:01
Speaker
the cheaper it becomes the more it makes sense so usually the response to that is the response to the question or how I address it is say look it depends a little bit on the product. Actually no it doesn't depend a little bit on the product depends everything on the product.
00:45:16
Speaker
everything depends on the product that you're actually making. If the product is a widget and you're going to be selling 10,000 of the widgets and there's not going to be any sort of variance, traditional manufacturing is the way to go. And that's not to say that additive manufacturing doesn't have a role to play. It just simply means that for actual production purposes, TM is the way to go.
00:45:37
Speaker
If, on the other hand, that widget needs to be varied, every dozen or so has to be slightly different, then traditional manufacturing is a little bit less. Now, of course, I'm being very facetious here. You don't need to change a widget every dozen or so. I'm just simply saying that if any sort of customization is required to suit client needs or whatnot in a particular product,
00:46:03
Speaker
The traditional manufacturing becomes less viable because at that point then either you're looking at other CNC type devices to produce and usually in a case like that, you're looking at setup costs for every single variance that you're making.
00:46:21
Speaker
Or, so you know what, I can get very abstract here and it's very difficult to do without actually having a component to draw on or to visualize. But the point is that there are advantages to both. And usually if you're weighing one versus the other, it's a good idea to have a good grasp on what it is that's being done.
The Role of Additive Manufacturing in Prototyping
00:46:43
Speaker
Even then, AM is great because even if you are looking and you say, okay, I'm going to,
00:46:52
Speaker
I'm going to use traditional manufacturing to actually produce this product going forward. Even then, to get to that point, AM still plays a role. AM can play a role in the production of those prototypes. It doesn't actually even have to be just a prototype for the purpose of handling or visualizing or putting it on your finger or whatever.
00:47:15
Speaker
It can actually be a functional prototype and functional prototypes are fantastic if you're trying to do market research before you actually take the deep dive into the production of a mold going forward. So there are a lot of aspects in which not only can AM produce, but it actually can complement existing
00:47:38
Speaker
Existing production methods and that's something that is uniquely AM, because beyond that it's usually before AM, it's usually the cost and the time and what not invested in the production of a prototype is pretty, well it's very, very high.
00:47:58
Speaker
It is exactly. It's like you're in my head. All these things that you've been saying is what we've lived and dreamed these last five years. Our product that we took to market, we're at prototype number five, and we were very lucky and fortunate to sell 20 of version four, which was all
00:48:18
Speaker
done by AM. Once we were able to prove the market out and prove that we were able to sell X amount, we made the investment of $150,000 in tooling. That's the beauty of AM. It's exactly what you talked about. So, you've really got a great experience
00:48:37
Speaker
You've had a great experience with this podcast, and there's so much more to learn and get yourself first into how this can benefit you, your business. It's one of those things which really helps get product to market quicker. It helps the engineering process. We're actually able to have those, touch it, feel it, put it into use, and help companies be successful.
00:49:06
Speaker
I think what you've just touched on, we do project analyses. And in the process of doing that analysis, especially when it comes to the production of an item, of a product,
00:49:28
Speaker
There are a lot of things that we actually ask about that go from beginning to end. What is the product? What's your entry point? What's your goal? What's your exit? What are you hoping to accomplish? Everything in between has to be taken into consideration. I don't have to say any more than that because every case is slightly different and I think you've hit the nail on the head.
00:49:54
Speaker
That's absolutely right.
Closing Remarks and Future Episodes
00:49:55
Speaker
Lester, you're very fortunate that this podcast series is something that we're going to be doing more frequently and we're going to be rolling out different episodes and we're hoping to get lots of feedback so we can bring more information to you.
00:50:11
Speaker
I wanted to say thanks very much, Elin, with i3D, and look forward to the next podcast, and we're hoping that we can bring you back as a guest and talk more about the technology in AM. I want to say thank you to our sponsors, and yeah, look forward to the next session. You're very welcome, and I look forward to it as well. Awesome. Thank you. Thank you for your time. Thanks so much.