Why you are not going to get a desktop SLS printer*

Preface:  The first patent ever (owned by Carl R. Deckard)  issued towards Selective Laser Sintering is going to expire in 2014. Because of that, a few popular magazines wrote articles about it, saying that these (or more exactly, this) patent(s) is "holding back SLS from getting to the hobbyists".

To be honest, this is just wrong. I tried to collect the reasons why you won't get a SLS printer for your desk, and compile them into the following list. Feel free to comment on it, and discuss it with me.

1. Cost - Divided into the different parts that make the printer that expensive
• Laser
No, the laser is not going to get cheaper only because some patents, which aren't even related to it, are going to expire. Maybe the price of an appropriate laser will sink a bit, because the demand increases, but that's not going to make a huge difference. Just taking a less expensive one is not going to work because you need:
• Accuracy
• The right power
• A good focus
• Powder
Here it's already more likely that the price is going to drop over time. The problem is that you can't just take "some powder". You'll need a material that fulfills the following:
• thermal conductivity
• thermal capacity
• viscosity
• flowability
• grain size distribution
in the right amount. There is a reason, why people write their PhD about the topic of finding new usable powders.
• Heating Chamber
If you want to print fast (read: efficient), the whole printing area should already be near the sintering point of the powder, which lies around 180°C (depending on the powder). Now that you have a functional and accurate (yes, 1 degree does make a difference) heating chamber, have fun isolating it.
• Gas
You are going to inert nitrogen into the building area, because the powder would react with oxygen at the temperature you print at. That would influence the quality you are able to achieve heavily.
Did I mention that you have to pay that gas? And you should also store it appropriately, because nobody likes to suffocate.
• Leakless building chamber
If you are going to inert nitrogen into the building chamber, please make it leakless. Better for everyone.
2. Size - Sounds weird, but there is a reason why the current printers are that big
• Powder storage
The powder distribution system has a huge advantage (you don't need supports), but also the disadvantage that you need about double the size of the printing bed as footprint. (Why's that you ask? I'm going to answer that in the "How SLS works"-post).
• Heating Chamber
It's hot in there. You should isolate it. Unfortunately, that takes even more space up.
• Laser
If you get a powerful laser, you are probably going to get a whole processing-unit with it. That thing isn't too small either!
• Cost efficiency (While this applies to the machines we have right now, you can probably ignore that for the hobbyists version of it (if it will ever exist).
To be cost efficient, you should print as much stuff as only possible at the same time. This is easier if you have a bigger printing area. Furthermore, you can print bigger (= more expensive) stuff on a bigger machine.
3. Various - Even more reasons againt something I want. Damn!
• Mess
After your print finished, you should get your parts out of the machine. Which is full of powder now. Welp, that's going to be a mess. In your workspace.

• Powder
The particles of the powder you use are small enough to be breathed, what's pretty bad for your health. Also, they are going to fly everywhere.
• Gas
Do you really want a big bottle of nitrogen in your workspace?
• Calibration
You thought that the calibration of your FDM printer is annoying and difficult? I feel like it would be much more difficult if you had to calibrate:
• laser
• powder distribution system
• heating chamber
All these points are important, and influence the quality of the part you get out of your hypothetical machine.
• Powder recycling station
Because the part you just created was sintered, and the space where the powder is, was hot, these particles are sticking to each other as well. This has two consequences:
• You have to filter the used powder to get the sintered particles out of the "good" powder.
• You need huge amounts of powder, because you are throwing big parts of it away after every print.
• Lead time
Chances are that noone really started the development of a DIY-SLS printer. I guess you should expect a waiting time (if you will ever get such a printer).
• Patents
Did you really believe that the ur-patent from Mr. Deckard was the only patent on SLS?

That being said, I would love it if I had a dektop-SLS-printer. I am simply trying to get some real arguments into the discussion.

*depending on your definition of "desktop", the possibility that we might get such a printer exists. It's still very unlikely.

Fused deposit modeling

I already promised that there are going to be more detailed posts about the printing-techniques. (I mean...you waited long enough now.) So, here's the first of them:

Fdm

History

Who read my last blog post knows already that the fused deposit modeling is the oldest "printing" method. The technology was developed in the late eighties and commercialized in the early nineties by Stratasys, Inc. S. Scott Crump, the co-founder, and currently CEO, of Stratasys patented the FDM technology in 1989 with his wife and also co-founder, Lisa Crump. In 2003, the FDM-technology was the most used rapid prototyping technique.

Process

The model is - obviously - built layer for layer, either until the model is finished or there isn't any material available.

The FDM-Process

As you see on the graphic, the extruder/ the printing head or the platform where the model is built, is fixed. However, there are a few different ways of moving the extruder. The most common method to do this is the "cartesian"-system, but a different system - the so called "Delta-Printer" - is rising.

Material loading

The material used is stored on a spool respectively multiple different spools if there is more than one printhead. From the spool, the filament is led to the extruder. As you see, the material loading for the FDM process isn't too complicated. However this is very different for the other processes I am going to describe in here.

Extrusion

The extruder is the heart of any FDM-printer. It's the place where the stiff plastic filament gets molten and placed in the form of the model we want to achieve. The following graphic is pretty self-explaining, but I am going to say a few words along with it:

Material-loading and extrusion

After the filament is pulled into the extruder by the stepper motor, it is pressed inside the hot-end, where the filament gets molten. Depending on the filament (ABS, PLA, etc.) the temperature of the hot-end varies.

Advantages

• It's cheap. As you may know, the cheapest 3d printer is the printrbot simple for only 300 Dollar. Compared to the much more expensive SLS/SLM/SLA-machines, even something like the makerbot is easily affordable.
• The filament is available in a great range of materials, and most of it is pretty cheap.
• Very compact build-style.
• Easy to operate and keep working.

I know that there are a few more advantages, but I feel like these are the most important. I might even write a more detailled post later on.

Disadvantages

• Supports are required for complicated geometries. Although there are machines that use dissoluble materials for the support is this a limiting factor for this technology.
• If you want a clean surface, you have to go through post-processing. This is the effect of the layers.
• Lacking accuracy in comparison to the "bigger" printing-technologies like SLS.

I hope reading this post was enjoyable and informative for you.

I promise that there won't be such a big gap between this and my next post.

Cya 

3d-Printing. What's that?

Today I'm going to give you a quick summary of the different methods which are used to print in the third dimension. There are quite a few, and in this post, I'll only present an overview about the most important ones. I hope I'll be able to give you a closer look onto the different methods, how they work and their advantages/disadvantages in the next few posts.
Let's start (In a more or less chronological order):

FDM

The first method of three-dimensional printing was the Fused deposition modeling. It was invented in the eighties. FDM is the "traditional" way of rapid prototyping. The way it works isn't very complicated:

There is a so called extruder, which is about 200 - 300 °C warm (depending on the printed material). In the middle of the extruder is a hole, where the plastic (for example ABS, PLA, PVC, etc) is melted. In the most of the "fabbers", the extruder is fixed, and the (mostly warmed) printing-bed is moved.
The model is fabricated layer by layer with this procedure (like in every other technology I'm going to talk about :D).

SLM

The Selective Laser Melting is another way to "print" models. Not these but these models. It works like that: We have a bed of powder (f. e. Polyamide (especially Pa-12)) and a high-energy laser (up to 30W). With our laser it's easy to melt the powder and get a stable shape of "plastic". It's also possible to do this with metal-powder (with a few small adjustments).

SLS

The Selective Laser Sintering is basically the same as the SLM. The big difference between these two methods of printing is the material which is used to print. Also, the density of the product produced with the SLS-technology is lower than the one achieved by SLM. For more information, have a look at this paper or come back to this blog later (there will be more information soon).

LOM

Laminated Object Modelling is in my opinion the most intuitive way to print sculptures. The name of the method already tells you how it works: We take a foil of paper (or something else, like ceramic, plastic and even aluminium is possible) and cut out the cross section of our model (the most used cutting-technique is a laser). Now we start doing this again and again and after some time we have our finished model. There are several ways to glue the layers together like polymerisation,  galvanic ways or the simplest of all: glue.

SLA

The method which is called "Stereolithography" was patented in 1986 and is another potent type of 3D-printing. Again, we create partially hard plastic. But instead of melting powder we solidify a liquid respectively a kind of a resin. The liquid is a so called photopolymer, a material which changes its properties when exposed to light.

3DP

3DP stands for 3 dimensional printing, where a more or less normal printer is used to bind powder. The inkjet like printer does not emit ink but a binding material for the powder. The interesting part about this way of printing is the ability of building full-coloured models.

Of course there are more methods of additive manufacturing, but it would be too much to present all of these techniques. The ones I tried to give a small overview are the most important ones and the current industry standard.

Welcome!

Hey, and welcome to my blog!
This blog is about 3d-printing,  microcontrollers (especially about the Arduino), programming and other technical stuff.