Plastics

Polyamide, Alumide and Rubber-like use one of the most versatile and frequently 3D printing technologies: Laser Sintering, a laser-based technology that uses solid powder materials. A computer-controlled laser beam selectively binds together particles in the powder bed, by raising the powder temperature above the glass transition point after which adjacent particles flow together. As the powder is self-supporting, no support structures are necessary.

Standard Resin, Mammoth Resin, Gray Resin and Transparent Resin use the veteran of 3D printing technologies: Stereolithography. It’s been around at Materialise since 1990, and continues to be one of the most widely-used 3D printing technologies for plastic models. Stereolithography is a laser-based technology that uses a UV-sensitive liquid resin. A UV laser beam scans the surface of the resin and selectively hardens the material corresponding to a cross section of the product, building the 3D part from the bottom to the top. The required supports for overhangs and cavities are automatically generated, and later manually removed.

ABS uses what is probably the most adopted 3D printing technology around: Fused Deposition Modeling. It’s a filament-based technology where a temperature-controlled head extrudes a thermoplastic material layer by layer onto a build platform. A support structure is created where needed and built in a water-soluble material.

High Detail Resin uses a 3D printing technology called PolyJet. The technology works by jetting photopolymer materials in ultra-thin layers onto a build platform. Each photopolymer layer is cured by UV light immediately after it is jetted, producing fully cured models that can be handled and used immediately, without post-curing. The gel-like support material, designed to support complicated geometries, is subsequently removed by water jetting.