This post will focus on desktop 3D printing. Most Zealots are used to 2D printing, X and Y drawing on paper, and providing the Z axis through adding cardstock (and other materials) together using adhesive. This process is both additive and subtractive in that we print out parts (or lay them out) on standard sized material, and remove the excess material (subtractive manufacturing) in the first steps, and then take these components and then piece them together (additive sculpture in this case).
People familiar with machining wood, metal, or other materials will instantly recognize many of the features used in 3D printing, as a 3D printer is nothing more than a computer numeric controlled (CNC) machine tool. Having a CNC background certainly helps, but with today's 3D printing tech boom over the last decade, such knowledge is largely optional to start out with (you will end up learning, and it will be more fun than my community college CNC courses...). 3D printers are CNC machines with a printhead instead of a cutting tool. Material in the most common form of desktop 3d printers is fed into the print head and extruded on the printing platform in Fused Deposition of Material (FDM). Another growing form of desktop 3D printing is stereolithography (SLA) which uses a laser print head and layers of printing resin (odds are the elaborate jewelry you see out there was made using this method combined with lost wax casting...).
In either case, material ends up deposited layer by layer. Layer heights are what make up the resolution of the item. Rapid prototyping using FDM printers and plastic to check functionality and interferences where detail is not needed are typically created quickly and have a resolution of 0.2mm and greater depending on the printer. Finer prints can with FDM can down to 0.05mm resolution, as seen in my post where I printed and painted Bent Copper (alien cop). Further reading can be found on the following site for more information all3dp.com for a good article. Bear in mind, technology changes quickly, and this article may already be out of date about the resolutions, as new FDM print heads have been released that contain smaller nozzles and are lighter weight allowing the machine to print finer and finer...
FDM has a bewildering array of options for the kind of plastics you can print with. These range from polylactic acid (PLA, plastic derived from plant based sugars, therefore 'green' bio plastic) and acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) as the two most common, to nylon and metal (copper can filament can sometimes contain over 80% copper and fired in a kiln to remove the plastic making metal parts and sculptures) and wood particle infused materials.
Updates to follow (1/24/19)
People familiar with machining wood, metal, or other materials will instantly recognize many of the features used in 3D printing, as a 3D printer is nothing more than a computer numeric controlled (CNC) machine tool. Having a CNC background certainly helps, but with today's 3D printing tech boom over the last decade, such knowledge is largely optional to start out with (you will end up learning, and it will be more fun than my community college CNC courses...). 3D printers are CNC machines with a printhead instead of a cutting tool. Material in the most common form of desktop 3d printers is fed into the print head and extruded on the printing platform in Fused Deposition of Material (FDM). Another growing form of desktop 3D printing is stereolithography (SLA) which uses a laser print head and layers of printing resin (odds are the elaborate jewelry you see out there was made using this method combined with lost wax casting...).
In either case, material ends up deposited layer by layer. Layer heights are what make up the resolution of the item. Rapid prototyping using FDM printers and plastic to check functionality and interferences where detail is not needed are typically created quickly and have a resolution of 0.2mm and greater depending on the printer. Finer prints can with FDM can down to 0.05mm resolution, as seen in my post where I printed and painted Bent Copper (alien cop). Further reading can be found on the following site for more information all3dp.com for a good article. Bear in mind, technology changes quickly, and this article may already be out of date about the resolutions, as new FDM print heads have been released that contain smaller nozzles and are lighter weight allowing the machine to print finer and finer...
FDM has a bewildering array of options for the kind of plastics you can print with. These range from polylactic acid (PLA, plastic derived from plant based sugars, therefore 'green' bio plastic) and acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) as the two most common, to nylon and metal (copper can filament can sometimes contain over 80% copper and fired in a kiln to remove the plastic making metal parts and sculptures) and wood particle infused materials.
Updates to follow (1/24/19)