3D Printing Basics for Entertainment Design

Anne E. McMills

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351610810
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Mezzi di comunicazione e arti performative
• Subtopic: Teatro

Affordable 3D printers are rapidly becoming everyday additions to the desktops and worktables of entertainment design practitioners – whether working in theatre, theme parks, television and film, museum design, window displays, animatronics, or… you name it! We are beginning to ask important questions about these emerging practices:

· How can we use 3D fabrication to make the design and production process more efficient?

· How can it be used to create useful and creative items?

· Can it save us from digging endlessly through thrift store shelves or from yet another late-night build?

· And when budgets are tight, will it save us money?

This quick start guide will help you navigate the alphabet soup that is 3D printing and begin to answer these questions for yourself. It outlines the basics of the technology, and its many uses in entertainment design. With straightforward and easy-to-follow information, you will learn ways to acquire printable 3D models, basic methods of creating your own, and tips along the way to produce successful prints.

Over 70 professionals contributed images, guidance, and never-before-seen case studies filled with insider secrets to this book, including tutorials by designer and pioneer, Owen M. Collins.

Part I
The Basics

Photo cour tesy of: Anshuman Bhatia, www.shapeways.com/shops/ab

So, What Exactly is 3D Printing?

3D printing (often abbreviated as “3DP”) is a rather ambiguous term. In recent years, it has become a popular buzzword encompassing a mixed cocktail of manufacturing techniques and technologies. To make things even more complex, many 3D printing techniques have acquired multiple, interchangeable names.

Terminology Used Interchangeably with the General Term “3D Printing”

• Rapid Prototyping (RP)
• Rapid Manufacture (RM)
• Rapid Tooling (RT)
• Additive Manufacturing (AM)
• Additive Layer Manufacture (ALM)
• 3D or Desktop Fabbing
• Direct Digital Fabrication
• Personal Manufacturing
• Desktop Manufacturing
• Digital Manufacturing

Formally, 3D printing is defined as the process by which a virtual 3D model is translated into a physical three-dimensional object, usually by means of computer control and instruction. Most often the object is manufactured by the build-up of multiple small layers of material.

3D printing is considered additive manufacturing – meaning that the printer adds material together to create the object. It essentially creates something from nothing – a green technology nearly devoid of waste. This method is the opposite of subtractive manufacturing (used by CNC machines and other traditional sculpting methods) which carves (or “subtracts”) an object out of an existing block of material, thereby producing excess waste.

On a very basic level, the concept of 3D printing is not so different from our decades-old 2D printer technology. A 2D printer takes a virtual item (like a text document in the computer) and outputs a physical object – an exact replica of the virtual document in the physical form of a piece of paper. A 3D printer does the same thing only the resulting object is three-dimensional. The object may even have moving and functional parts.

Chapter 1
Methods of 3D Printing

There are four basic types of 3D printing methods at this time: Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM), Stereolithography (SLA), Granular Materials Binding (GMB), and Selective Deposition Lamination (SDL). All of these processes take a virtual model and build it – bit by bit – into a physical object. The way this happens is what determines the name of the method. Which one you choose largely depends on personal preference, your access to the technology, and the needs of the object you intend to create.

Printing Techniques

Figure 1.1 Flowchart showing the relationship between popular forms of 3D printing.

Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM)

Figure 1.2 Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM).

Photo courtesy of: Softsolder.com

Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) is a 3D printing process by which thermoplastic filament (or plastic that is malleable when heated) is extruded through a small nozzle into fine layers that stack upon each other to create an object (see Figure 1.2). FDM is the most common type of consumer-level 3D printer at this time and can use a variety of types of thermoplastic filament (consider this the “ink” for FDM printers); the most popular being ABS and PLA. (More on filament in Chapter 2.)

Other Names Used for Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM)

• Fused Filament Fabrication (FFF)
• Molten Polymer Deposition (MPD)
• Thermoplastic Extrusion
• Fused Filament Method (FFM)
• Plastic Jet Printing (PJP)

Think of FDM like a really smart hot-glue gun. In the same way a glue stick is inserted into the back of a glue gun, thermoplastic filament is fed into the 3D printer. The printer heats up the plastic to a molten state and extrudes (or squeezes) it through a small nozzle – much like a hot-glue gun oozes molten glue when the trigger is pulled. A computer controls the 3D printer’s movement (based on your 3D model) and tells it to selectively deposit the molten plastic in the shape of the first layer of your object, which solidifies almost immediately as it cools. Then the next layer is extruded on top of the first layer, and so on (see Figure 1.3). As the layers build on top of themselves – tiny layer by tiny layer – the physical object begins to take shape.

Figure 1.3 Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) process.

Image courtesy of: Mark Jaster, www.printspace3d.com

The FDM process was trademarked in 1988 by S. Scott Crump (co-founder of Stratasys). Crump filed for a patent in 1989 which was issued to Stratasys in 1992. He also patented and trademarked the term “fused deposition modeling.”

For more than a decade, this technology was only available at an industrial level – out of reach for the standard consumer. All that changed when Dr. Adrian Bowyer at Bath University invented a desktop 3D printer he named the RepRap (short for Replicating Rapid Prototyper), which was relatively inexpensive and capable of replicating most of its own parts. In 2005, he released the RepRap as an open-source printer and began the RepRap Project – encouraging others to create their own. The RepRap Project spawned a massive outcropping of innovative FDM printers on the market, including the first-ever commercially available 3D printer – the BfB RepMan (January 2009) and the extremely popular MakerBot Cupcake CNC (March 2009).

Stereolithography (SLA)

Stereolithography (SLA) 3D printers, the second most common consumer-level 3D printer, use a process called photopolymerization. This process uses a high-intensity energy or light source to cure a liquid photopolymeric resin into solid layers (see Figure 1.4); a photopolymer is any material that can transform from a liquid to a solid almost instantaneously when stimulated by light. Depending on the energy source (a UV laser or a projector), SLA printers are divided into two categories: Spectrum Laser (SL) or Digital Light Processing (DLP), respectively.

Figure 1.4 Stereolithography (SLA).

Photo courtesy of: Formlabs

As each layer is “drawn” in the pool of resin by the light source, it solidifies. The object is shifted slightly from its surrounding resin bath and the process repeats (see Figure 1.5).

Figure 1.5 Stereolithography (SLA) process.

Image courtesy of: Mark Jaster, www.printspace3d.com

After the print is complete, the excess resin must be rinsed off with isopropyl alcohol (IPA). To completely dry, the object may also need to be post-cured in the sun or under a UV light source before safely handling. Resin comes in limited color choices.

Other Names Used for Stereolithography

• Optical Fabrication
• Photo-Solidification
• Solid Free-Form Fabrication
• Solid Imaging

In 1983, SLA (“Stereolithograph...