Zacharie Lavigne
COMP-1631
February 1, 2011
The Inventor
The technology for printing physical 3D objects
from digital data was first developed by Charles Hull
in 1984. He named the technique stereolithography
and obtained a patent for the technique in 1986.
The same year, he founded 3D Systems and
developed the first commercial 3D Printing
machine.
3D Technology Timeline
Prototyping technologies and their
base materials
• 3D Printing (3DP): Various materials, including resins
• 3D Ceramic Printing: Various clay and ceramic
materials
• Selective laser sintering (SLS): Thermoplastics, metals,
sand and glass
• Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM): Thermoplastics
• Stereolithography (SL): Photopolymer
• Laminated object manufacturing: Laminate sheets,
often paper, and glue
• Electron Beam Melting (EBM): Titanium alloys
Selective Laser Sintering
• This is an additive manufacturing technique
that uses a high power laser to fuse small
particles of plastic, metal, ceramic or glass
powder into the desired 3-D shape.
• The laser selectively fuses the material by
scanning cross sections generated from a 3-D
digital description of the part, for example a
CAD file.
Fused Deposition Modeling
• FDM works on an "additive" principle by laying
down material in layers. A plastic filament or
metal wire is unwound from a coil and supplies
material to an extrusion nozzle. The nozzle is
heated to melt the material and can be moved
horizontally and vertically. The part, or model, is
produced by extruding mall beads of
thermoplastic material to form layers and the
material hardens immediately after extrusion
from the nozzle
Stereolithography
• Stereolithography is a process for creating
three-dimensional objects using a computer-
controlled laser to build the required
structure, layer by layer. It does this by using a
resin known as liquid photopolymer that
hardens when in contact with the air.
• The term “3D Printer” was not used by that time
and the machine was known as the
Stereolithography apparatus.
• Because the technology was so new, 3D Systems
delivered the first version of the machine to only
a few selected customers.
The Stereolithography Apparatus
Video of a Stereolithography machine
Charles Hull next to one of his latest 3D printers, the SLA7000
Electron Beam Melting
• This solid freeform fabrication method produces
fully dense meta, parts directly from metal
powder. The EMB machine reads data from a 3-D
CAD model and lays down successive layers of
powdered material. The layers are melted
together with the help of a computer controlled
electron beam. This way it builds up the parts.
The process takes place under a vacuum, which
makes it suited to manufacture parts made out of
reactive materials
New Developments
• First ever 3-D printed car.
– Urbee is the first prototype car ever to have its entire
body 3D printed with an additive process. All exterior
components, including the glass panel prototypes,
were created using Dimension 3D Printers and Fortus
3D Production Systems at Stratasys' digital
manufacturing service.
• 3-D printed Buildings?
– Architect Enrico Dini is planning to build the first ever
3-D printed building with the help of fellow architects.
Urbee
Wright, Paul K. (2001). 21st Century manufacturing. New Jersey:
Prentice-Hall Inc.
Lipson, Hod, Francis C. Moon, Jimmy Hai, and Carlo Paventi.
(2007) "3D-Printing the History of Mechanisms." Journal of
Science.
Wikipedia