printing with a Zcorp 3D printer

As many of the masses were introduced to 3D printing recently in a National Geographic video highlight featuring David Kaplan (and many questions were raised prompting this response video), I thought I’d share some info from this spec-rich outline of color 3D printing from 3Dprinters.biz.

It uses a colorful robot design as the model and gets into things like how many layers it takes to build, how thick the layers are, how long it takes to print, and even the amounts of ink and binder.

A summary of the process plus some specification numbers are after the jump. (Shout out to Joseph Flaherty at Replicator for the link.)

So here’s your colorful robot design (designed by Spaceclaim):



And here’s the robot being printed in the bed of powder, layer by layer. 910 layers to be exact, and each layer is .004″ thick. The 3D printer uses cyan, magenta, and yellow ink just like an inkjet printer.



After approximately 1.5ml of ink and 93ml of binder extruded over 5 hours and 22 minutes, you’ve got your colorful robot. But he’s all covered in powder and needs to be cleaned up.

The last step is to dip this guy into the infiltrant, a chemical agent that brightens and strengthens the printed object.

And there ya have it. One 3D design file + one ZPrinter® 450 + 910 layers of (powder + ink + binder) + 322 minutes = a colorful, 3D printed robot.

via 3Dprinters.biz

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P.S. Ponoko uses ZCorp printers for 3D printing your designs in rainbow ceramic, so this is exactly how it’s done. And now that you know how it all works, try getting your own design 3D printed in color.

Just sign up for your Personal Factory (it’s free), upload a file, pick a material, and hit the Make It button. Ponoko will send your file to a ZCorp 3D printer and then send your printed design, all infiltrated and everything, right to your door.