2
SEP
2020

Types of 3D printing

There are many types and methods of 3D printing available, from commercial/industrial scale right the way down to enthusiast driven home printing.

Technology has progressed dramatically from the early days and now it is possible to print almost anything using any material you could desire.

At 3DITServices we use FDM (fused deposition modeling) printers.

These printers take a material from a spool and feed (extrude) it through a heated printhead (hotend). 

The printhead then draws the model using the molten material layer by layer.  These layers can be very thin (commonly 0.1mm or 100 microns)

As each layer is printed the material cools and fuses to the previous layer.  Sometimes this requires a uniform temperature to be maintained both around the printer and on the print surface area (bed).

Designs can be sent to the printer using a variety of software and some printers also allow the design files to be read from a usb drive or storage card.