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 computercontrolled 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