Polypropylene

If possible, try to hollow out your part. This avoids deformation and discoloration during the printing process. You can either hollow out your part without a surface hole, which means that unsintered powder will remain trapped inside, or you can design a strategically placed hole (two would be even better) so that the unsintered powder can be easily removed after printing. If the part needs to be reclosed, design a lid with a diameter allowing for 0.5 mm play between the part and the lid.

If your part has walls thicker than 5 mm, our production team may hollow out the part to prevent deformation and discoloration. For parts with wall thickness higher than 10 mm wall thickness, this is done by default. In that case, the powder will stay trapped inside.

When designing parts that need to be assembled, it’s important to maintain enough distance between the parts. A perfect fit in your CAD software does not necessarily ensure a perfect fit after printing because your software ignores the friction present in the real world. Therefore, always leave at least 0.6 mm between the different parts. For parts with large surfaces and wall thicknesses, you will need to maintain even more distance between the parts.

In order to help us print your parts with the best possible dimensions for assembly, please design your files with an orientation equal to the relative orientation of your parts in the final assembly.

If a single file contains several shells that are not connected or interlocking, this can cause considerable challenges for our production team. First, identification of all your parts or shells may be challenging. When producing your design, your parts are combined with parts from other orders in the 3D printer. Most printers have a fixed printing volume. To save time and costs, we fill up the machine with as many ordered parts as the build will allow. This virtual 3D layout is then used for printing. Once the printing process is finished, we end up with a block of powder with all the different parts inside. If you have uploaded multiple small, unconnected shells, you can see how it could be very difficult to go back and recognize all the different shells contained within the powder block. Therefore, to solve this issue, we only accept models that are either connected or that can be enclosed in a container or box. Continue reading below for more details and some important consequences of these options.

One way of making sure all the shells in your design stay together and can be processed as one part is to connect the different shells with support beams. It is important that the parts are well connected and that the connection beams are strong enough. Use a minimum wall thickness of 3 mm as anything thinner will not be strong enough to support the different parts of your design.

The heavier/bulkier your individual parts are, the thicker the connecting beams should be. If the connections between the parts are too weak, there is a risk that your parts might get lost. You can prevent bulkier shells by hollowing them out. Just don’t forget to provide several large drainage holes so that the powder on the inside can be removed – otherwise, your part will not become lighter. The part’s wall should be less than 5 mm thick.

It’s also advisable to have 4 firm connections per shell. The larger the shells, the more difficult they are to connect properly. That’s why the sum of the dimensions of the imaginary box (X+Y+Z) around your design should be less than 350 mm.

If your parts have holes through them, another way to keep them connected is by combining them on a ring. Putting your parts on a key-chain style loop ensures that we can process your designs as one part. However, when grouping your parts with this method, we can no longer orient them individually or define the correct space between them. So to avoid any problems during the build, prepare your design with a minimum of 1 mm spacing between each part. The minimum thickness of the connecting loop should be 3 mm. Make sure to limit the number of parts on the loop as too many items or large and heavy parts will have a greater chance of causing the loop to break. Designs, where the chance of breakage is too high, will not be allowed.

Once printed, each model will need to be cleaned with a brush and sandblasted to remove the excess powder stuck to your model. This is the same for grouped models but in these cases, access to all of the parts is more difficult. Because parts will be connected to each other as well as a container, this may prevent every edge and corner from getting sandblasted. Please be aware that some residual powder might be present when receiving your parts. To clean your parts further, the residual powder can be removed with a brush or compressed air.

Please be aware that grouped models are only offered in natural finish. Because of the limitations stated above for these types of files, a good result cannot be guaranteed. Other finishes can be achieved through various post-processing techniques but will require perfectly cleaned and fully accessible parts, which is not possible for grouped models enclosed in a container immediately upon printing.