3d Printing: Additive manufacturing refers to the conversion of digital images into various kinds of 3 Dimensional objects. Additive process (process of creating an object by laying down many layers of material in succession till the creation of the entire object) is taken into application for creating such objects through a digital file.
Modeling Of an Object – 3d printing
The process of printing a 3D object starts with designing a virtual appearance of the object to be created. Virtual design of the object is designed in form of a CAD file by using a 3D modeling program or it can also be achieved by applying the use of a 3D scanner which makes a 3 dimensional digital copy of the object.
Printing of the Object
At first the file (STL format) has to be examined for any existing errors. If an error is found then in the next step the errors are fixed as most of the CAD software give out errors in the STL files. After the completion of the STL file and the errors being fixed, the file is processed by a software piece known a s a “Slicer”. The function of the slicer is to produce the model into a G-code file by converting the model into a series of thin layers. This file can then be printed by using a 3D printing client software.
The construction of a model using additive systems helps in the reduction of time to some hours as compared to to contemporary methods which could take several hours and sometimes several days in the task. Moreover the time also depends on the machine type and the number of objects being created.
Finishing of the Object
To achieve greater precision with the objects, it is a common practice to print a slightly over sized object first and then removing the material by applying a higher resolution subtractive process is a good move. There are additive manufacturing techniques that use multiple materials while constructing the object parts. By using these techniques one can use multiple colors and color combinations without taking painting into use.
With the change in Industrial trends, in recent times there has been a great exposure to this. Today an emerging industry that ia very promising is “Ecommerce based on 3D objects”.
Many giants in the business have expressed their interests in this and in the next couple of years this can be a huge industry in every part of the world.
www.shapeways.com & www.sculpteo.com are two of those websites that supports the ecommerce of 3D objects and these seem very promising in the coming times taking into consideration the vast advancements being made in technology an innovation these days.
We at Yugasa software labs are well aware of the terms and technologies related to this domain and we are working on projects based on this domain as well.
