3D Printing has come a long way in recent years and 3D printers have become almost commonplace in workplaces and homes. Although many company’s and hobbyists have invested in 3D printers, there is a huge difference between the quality, size and speeds that are available.
A FDM (Fused Deposition Modelling) 3D printer is what the majority of people tend to buy first off for simple prototype use. It is still “rapid prototyping” compared to other prototyping methods, but we consider FDM’s to be something of a tortoise compared to our Figure 4 Standalone Printer!
Not only does the Figure 4 produce parts of very high resolution, but is much, much faster than many other printers, bringing huge advantages when projects are under tight timelines or need multiple design reiterations tried and tested.
For example, the part shown here, printed on an FDM machine at 0.1mm layer height would take
7 hours 11 minutes,
whereas the same part printed on the Figure 4 at 0.05 layer height (half that of the FDM) would take a mere
1 hour 30 minutes!
That’s more highly detailed parts at a fraction of the time.
This gives us the potential to get multiple parts printed in a day and if we receive CAD data before 11am we have been able to ship to the client the same day (subject to capacity obviously).
Bear in mind, these aren’t just visual prototypes either, a client recently has been having parts with snap fits, clips and threads printed into them so they can be considered working prototypes for form and fit too.
It’s certainly worth thinking about! If you have a requirement, please get in touch sooner rather than later and we can get your parts to you asap.
For example, the part shown here, printed on an FDM machine at 0.1mm layer height would take
7 hours 11 minutes,
whereas the same part printed on the Figure 4 at 0.05 layer height (half that of the FDM) would take a mere
1 hour 30 minutes!
That’s more highly detailed parts at a fraction of the time.
This gives us the potential to get multiple parts printed in a day and if we receive CAD data before 11am we have been able to ship to the client the same day (subject to capacity obviously).
Bear in mind, these aren’t just visual prototypes either, a client recently has been having parts with snap fits, clips and threads printed into them so they can be considered working prototypes for form and fit too.
It’s certainly worth thinking about! If you have a requirement, please get in touch sooner rather than later and we can get your parts to you asap.
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