Tutorial Summer: the first steps of your 3D print
Are you ready for our Tutorial Summer? Bert, our Product Designer, will kick off the first session and tell you all about the first steps of 3D printing your design.
Bert: “3D printing is often mistaken for being one production or manufacturing technique for every material. But in fact, there are several kinds of techniques and machines. All techniques are making use of the same basic principle for producing your design: they start from scratch and build your model layer by layer. That’s why 3D printing is also referred to as Additive manufacturing.”
1. START DESIGNING
Bert: “Below you can see the flow of additive manufacturing. Everything starts with a virtual file on the computer.”
“This file can be drawn with a 3D modeling software or be obtained via 3D scanning. For modeling there is quite some software available on the market. Check out the easy creation tools in our creation corner if you want to get started without previous experience. If you don’t have time to model you can try out the 3D modeling service.”
2. WILL IT PRINT?
Bert: “Once we receive your 3D model through our 3D print lab, one of our support engineers will check your model on printability. Because the build of your design will be done layer by layer, we slice your model into tiny section or slices. The slices are usually 0.1mm thick.”
“With the slices info the machine can build up your model from scratch layer by layer – adding layers on top of each other. The printer starts from the bottom slice and draws that section, lays each layer on top of each other which in the end creates your 3D printed model.”
Watch out for our next tutorials and keep those design vibes going!
