Create3D - Additive Manufacturing Workshop - Reading UK.

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keithsloan52
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Create3D - Additive Manufacturing Workshop - Reading UK.

Post by keithsloan52 »

Given Dr Lukas du Plessis closing speech at the FreeCAD ( and Free CAE ) conference and his thoughts about a Factory in a Can ( Not sure that was the phase he used). I was interested to take up the opportunity to attend a Create3D Additive Manufacturing Workshop at Reading.

(Before using any of the info I am providing please double check as my note taking is not great)

The event was organised by Simon Chandler of Creat3D.

Two organisations were introducing and demo-ing some of their machines. The two organisation's being

Both companies were start ups of MIT students.

Both companies just offer closed systems in order to control the ease and quality of the printing. i.e.
they supply the printers, software, print materials. The printers have lasers to measure the quality of prints.

FormLabs have SLA printers from 2K and SLS for 20K ( but I am seeing higher UK prices on the net)

The quality of the 3D prints far exceeded anything I had seen at makerspaces but then they are professional printers.
They have a growing range of SLS materials.

They also have printers for Engineering Resins, Dental Resins, Nylon.

Application coverage being roughly 40% engineering, 30% Medical, 30% Education.

Markedforged offer printing of Carbon Fibre and two metals. Their success to-date has allowed them to make acquisitions such as Teton simulator for analysing loads on the 3D printed parts with Carbon Fibre inserts etc.

One of the break out demos was of eiger.io (You need to use Chrome as the browser)

All designs are loaded up a STL's. Where as Cura has 563 potential setting their software requires only the input of six options.
The software then analyses the STL object and produced a table of about 10 rows of about parameters with such measures as quality, print time etc. The user then chooses one of the (row) options. I think they also save the choice as default for further prints of the object.

They don't refer to any FEM anaylsis but call it a Simulator for displaying week points and allow input of loads etc.
You can then get it to optimise things, i.e. adjust the design and then print that. Somebody asked if the optimised design could be exported back to CAD software. The Answer was not really. After the demo I asked the questioner, how he would get the STL back to some Brep format and he said they used CATIA and had in the past used it to create a surface from a Mesh but agreed it was not the same as a direct Brep format as it would have been before the STL was exported.

At the demo of the FormLabs demo of their printer that could print Nylon I asked about anaylsis/simulator and they said they did not but Fusion 360 has Nylon Stress analsys. I am guessing that these are not part of the Free/Hobby F360.

Typical print times seem to be 10-20 plus hours, so use would be prototyping and small volumes.

@Varnu01 FYI A lovely young Japanese lady mentioned that DreamSmith in South Africa used their printers.
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