Plastics Technology

JAN 2018

Plastics Technology - Dedicated to improving Plastics Processing.

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What's more, he notes, his printers are fully automated so they can operate 24/7 without human intervention. "We have no need of robotic systems, because our printers remove the parts themselves (free dropped into bins) and are still lower cost to produce than most desktop 3D printer kits." Bentz expects to begin marketing the SlantBox to others in the near future, at an anticipated price of $1000 to $1500. Slant 3D's primary material is PLA, though it also uses ABS and TPU to a lesser extent. Twelve colors are offered at present. His clients include robotics companies, architecture firms, and numerous companies looking for promotional items and proto- types in substantial volumes. GOING AFTER INJECTION MOLDING According to Bentz, price isn't the only reason to consider 3D printing. "Traditional manufacturing techniques," he says, "require high up-front expenses for tooling and long-term, high-volume production of a component to amortize those initial expenses. But if there is a mistake in the product, or the market changes, so that the product must be modified, compa- nies may lose the entire investment in molds and tooling. This high risk also makes entry into high-volume production chal- lenging for small or new businesses. "3D printing allows an idea to go from conception to manu- facture quickly and much more affordably. There are no tooling costs or lead time. A company wishing to produce a product need only design it and then pay for the raw materials used to produce it. 3D printing puts physical products on equal footing with software products in production costs. Printing allows products to be produced at very low cost and constantly updated with no large capital expenditures." All that's necessary is to email Slant 3D a design file, and it can be put into production with little delay. However, Slant 3D also offers design services help get new products ready for production. Slant can do design consultation to judge print- ability and works with clients to tweak existing designs for optimum printability. Bentz concedes that surface smoothness is one area in which injection molding has an advantage over most 3D printing. Because 3D printed parts are typically produced in a sequence of layers, they can be weaker in the Z-direction than injection molded parts. However, Slant 3D has produced some structural parts. The key, Bentz notes, is that such parts must be designed specifically for 3D printing, not simply converted from an injection molded design. He adds that 3D printing has advantages for making so-called "impossible" parts. An example is the gear shafts shown in the photo above. They are built around a metal bearing, making the entire assembly effec- tively a single part. Injection molded parts for this assembly would have to be designed to interlock and pull apart so that a bearing could be inserted. In this case, what is now manufactured as a single assembly would have to be split into the gear, toothed pulley, shaft, and metal bearing, all of which would be manufactured separately and then assembled together. But since this part was 3D printed, the gear, pulley, and shaft were combined into a single part. During production, the build would pause to insert the metal bearing. Then the build would continue and the part would be built around the bearing. 3D printing reduced four parts to two. Manufacturing cost was dramatically reduced because there was no assembly and none of the tooling that would have been required for the three plastic parts combined with the bearing. Slant 3D is using this approach to develop a "fidget spinner" with an internal bearing. Bentz will give a talk on 3D printing at Plastics Technology's Molding 2018 Conference, Feb. 27-Mar. 1 in Long Beach, Calif. A representative of Voodoo Manufacturing will also speak there. Details and registration are at moldingconference.com. "3D printing puts physical products on equal footing with software products in production costs. They can be constantly updated with no large capital expenditures." Slant 3D can produce anything from promotional items to small mechanical components at prices competitive with injection molding in volumes up to 20,000 parts. 3D printing can make "impossible" parts like these gear shafts with a metal bearing inside. The gear, toothed pulley, and shaft are one plastic part that was built around the bearing instead of manufactured separately. 22 JANUARY 2018 Plastics Technology PTonline.com 3 D P R I N T I N G Close -Up On Technolog y

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