What on earth is 3d printing anyway?

Most of the time when you hear someone talking about printing, your mind immediately goes to something like a document, picture or something like that. So what exactly is 3d printing anyway? Is it just printing a picture in 3d? Oh no my friend!! It is much much more than that. 3d printing is the way that you bring your ideas to life! Imagine having an idea for a brilliant new invention that you feel will change the world! Years ago one would say, ” Man, I just don’t have the cash to get this idea moving. Its just too expensive to have someone make my prototype.” Here is where 3d printing shines! Now you can have said idea fabricated and in short order at a fraction of the expense. No tooling to worry about. No minimum quantity to reach. No massive amounts of material waisted in a machining process.

Here is how it works…

  1. You have an idea.
  2. You create it in some modeling software.
  3. You bring your idea to life by 3d printing.

The process of 3d printing uses a small printhead that is kind of like a very, very small glue gun and the glue stick is made of plastic instead of glue. The printhead lays down a thin layer of plastic, about as thick as a piece of paper, on to the print bead and starts to build your idea layer on top of layer until your 3d model has been created. The process can take anywhere from 5 minutes to 5 days depending on the size and complexity of the model.

You truly can print everything from Toys to car parts to planters or even scale models of cities. Your imagination is truly the only limit.

Feel free to contact us if you would like help bringing your idea to life.