Page 5 - 3D Printing: The Revolution in Personalized Manufacturing

things: it slices your digital object into thin horizontal slices, or
layers, like a deli worker slices cheese from a large cheese block.
The file format then provides instructions to the hardware—the
3D printer—for how to add each layer on top of the previous layer
so the printer can build the physical object you designed on your

computer. Depending on
the 3D printing process, the
printer will squeeze melted
material out of a nozzle (like
a baker squeezing icing out
of a cake-decorating tube).
Or a laser will harden and
deposit material layer by
layer (like chocolate sauce
that instantly hardens when it
hits your ice cream).

THE PROCESS
The FDM process falls in the
squeezer category. SLA and
SLS processes are hardeners.
(Reminder: fused deposition
modeling, FDM, is also
Like cooking, 3D printing relies on a set of
known as fused filament
instructions to create a final product using
fabrication, FFF, when the specific materials and tools. And like cooking,
process is used by a non- it is something you can do at home.
Stratasys company.) FDM
uses strands of brightly
colored thermoplastic filaments coiled around spools like thick
thread. The printer melts the filaments strand by strand, and the
nozzle deposits, or squeezes, the melted filament onto the printer

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HOW IT WORKS