A note from Jeff Hanson on…the benefits of fused deposition modeling for direct digital manufacturing

Jeff Hanson RedEye

Whether you are a large, Fortune 500 company or a small, privately owned business, you are always looking for ways to save money, but still get your products to market faster. As the technology continues to evolve, traditional rapid prototyping methods will transition into progressive, cost-effective manufacturing processes. Many RP technologies are well suited to perform manufacturing functions. However, FDM has a key advantage over other technologies, such as SLA and SLS - repeatability.

Most of you already know that technologies like SLA and SLS use resins to build your models and parts. The resin is dumped into a vat and heated with a laser to construct your application. When the resin runs low, more is added, but the ratio is rarely the same from one add to the next. In order to ensure part repeatability, operators must refill the vat with the same resin - not old resin from a previous project – at a consistent ratio. In addition to that, the lasers used in SLA and SLS deteriorate over time, so an application built with a new laser will generate a better quality part. The submission of the same application a few months later could result in a part of lesser quality due to the depreciation of the laser.

FDM technology uses raw thermoplastic materials, which are used in most injection molded applications. The thermoplastic material is fed into the system through a spool, which eliminates mixing materials, and heated to the glass transition - or Tg - point (the point at which plastic transforms from a solid to a liquid). As the material is extruded, it cools and fuses to the layers below it. Since FDM produces parts with real thermoplastic materials, they are much less susceptible to dimensional changes in comparison to parts built with other additive fabrication technologies.

The repeatability combined with enhanced features, such as Ready Part (a part smoothing process, available on U.S. orders only), is helping FDM quickly move toward an end-use manufacturing technology. Whether you need your part for design verification, form-fit testing or end-use, the ability to start your production with a few thousand pieces, while waiting for tooling, provides a real competitive advantage. Ready Part drastically reduces the need for sanding parts and prepares parts for post-finishing processes, such as priming, plating and painting. That means designers and engineers can save time and resources previously dedicated to those processes.

We understand our customers' need to quickly get quality parts to market. With every technology enhancement and every milestone in the FDM technology, we are quickly moving toward serving as your one-stop-shop for manufacturing.
Top