NACAM42 Formlabs is releasing a reprocessor with their SLS Printer so that you can reuse the support material that was brushed off. There is a video on tested about the whole thing, but the cost of the machine, reprocessor and cleaning station is about $20,000USD if I remember correctly.
In my mind, SLS = Metal sintering for some reason. When I heard it was nylon, I was a little bit surprised, especially given how the material seems to be just powdered plastic.
Yep, between the much higher printer and materials costs, the dodgy dimensional stability, plus the added 'mess' potential for both SLA and SLS, currently not seeing a 'yuge' advantage over nylon FDM.
Me too. The cheapest metal sintering machines go for $20,000. But you will need a binder removal machine and an oven for sintering. No real cheap solutions yet for metal but I suspect it's coming soon. It will be a revolution when it does.
Another issue with SLS is that any parts that are manifold have to be 100% infill. If you want larger parts that are light or use less material then a large enough hole has to be designed into the part to let unused material escape.
iPeel aaand with something like a new cura infill you can just drain whole thing out with one hole as its constructed in a way that allows you to do that.
This isn't a significant drawback though, and it's not unique to SLS printing. Any small pinhole will do to evacuate the material, and if you make any closed cavity with any print method, you WILL have trapped material inside, with resin printing, it's air and resin, with laser sintering it's sintering media, and with extrusion printing, it's loose filament strings and air.
Well the video at 2:34 seems to show the powder clumping and sticking to the model pretty significantly. The person in the video is using a brush to free the powder from the actual model. So a semi hollow enclosed model could be a problem freeing up the internal powder. Yes resin needs to be drained but the remaining resin is still in liquid form so no problem.
Material usage is probably not too much of an issue, considering you can only go up to 50% reused material. So the ideal amount of material used is 50% or more.
@@operator8014 air isn't "loose material", and loose filament strings don't get trapped as a necessity of the technology. Even you do get some filament trapped it certainly doesn't fill the entire cavity.
Sls Nylon is very strong and can detail your prints very exactly without leaving a mark, but I think sls for now is way to expensive to be considered for now on. I always like to check on 3dhubs for the types of plastic but my favorite one so far is ABS or SLA because of the lower cost and the smoothness of the plastic
Oh I did not notice you were make anything, I love your channel and your cool guy video. Why won't you create a discord server for your channel? I think it is a pretty cool idea for users to share their prints with other experienced users.
The Geeetech MeCreator I've played around with a little bit, not a huge fan so far. I also need to start printing with the Tarantula, I've only done a benchy for now. It does seem promising for the price, but I'd tend to recommend spending another $100 for a range of printers that are quite a bit better.
Dear Angus, i work at an institute in germany and we can regenerate the heat deflected pa12 sls-material from the build chamber and reuse it for one time. So our Partner, a company can offer the half of the price for the Material. We also have better material properties than the original material. You also forgot the Sintratec S1 from switzerland. We will get one next week. If you are interested, i can send you a Feedback. But nice video, you hit a lot of facts and the answer why they use black material is also correct. I give a thumbs up ;)
You act like this shirt was some kind of insult bravely worn in front of the masses. It's a fuckin' shirt and it's not even that bad. Not my style nor do I see anything wrong with wearing it.
There is no single 3D print tech that will be “the future”, same as there’s no single traditional manufacturing process that “won”. And there will surely be even more processes as the tech evolves.
@@MrGTAmodsgerman Truthfully the future is not good. People are simply too stupid; they keep fixing what ain't broke. The lust for something "new" is the extinction of humanity. There is nothing new, everything has been done already; now we must choose the most efficient road and stay on it.
I always love how honest and real your reviews are. SLS printing does look good for businesses, but that mess and cost doesn't look practical for normal people. Thank you for all the great videos.
high speed sintering is the future, the unused powder isn't sintered and the part can be easily pulled out the powder bed. the unused powder is also 100% reusable and the system is 10 times faster.
I think the problem with SLS is that the heat create with the laser dissipate too fast because the laser melt a tiny surface so you need to heat the chamber. I think future SLS will don't have this problem with more powerful lasers.
It's also a problem of electricity consumption, if you melt 1X10kg of a matter you need less power than if you melt 100X 100g of the same matter because the more the part is tiny the faster it cooled and you need an amount of energy to keep it melted. so to melt a part single voxel per single voxel you need too much electricity, to heat the chamber solve half the problem.
Small volume, affordable, metal sintering machines, even if they are slow, will be something to keep an eye out for too now that these techs are patent free. It's one of the few processes that can actually produce descent metal parts. SLA or FFF(FDM) can't do these in any iteration of the technology. But it'll be good to see these nylon printing machines showing up on 3d hubs and the like by dedicated home users as an option.
high speed sintering will a day replace sls but only for plastics for the first time, the unused powder is 100 % reusable because the chamber isn't heated and the printer is 10 times faster. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-2jiPUORBu8Q.html
Material costs 5x as much as FDM, most of it is wasted, you can't do hollow internal spaces, can't do multiple materials in the same print, and it takes many times longer to print? Doesn't sound like the future to me. Now if someone comes out with a sub-5K SLS metal printer, that will be a big deal. But even then, it will have to achieve better detail and strength than sintered Filamet.
It will probably find it's (rather big) niche in vintage car repair - it's most likely the best technology to make durable replacement plastic parts at a reasonable price point.
That said, if you make full use of the build volume (basically, plan your printing sessions so you can fill the chamber with prints, rather than trying to do one at a time), you can largely mitigate the problem of wasted powder...
Great video, I hadn’t actually heard of SLS before and this seems like a great breakdown of the concept. On a related note, have you tried sandblasting as a clean up technique on PLA prints?
Can you review the iro3d? It's a $6,000 selective powder deposition printer. It does pretty much any type of metal, apparently has no shrinkage and 100% density. I would be very interested to know whether I can use that to make actual parts for a machine.
SLS is great but the cost is just way too high still. Maybe it is the future, but if it is it won't be for quite some time. SLS still has a long way to go before it can compete with consumer level FDM printers.
3DprintedLife yes, but its pretty cheap for a bureau to do if you can wait a few days. I am surprised that many 3d printer companies dont use it for parts. Bondtech seem to be the only ones I know.
The inability to reuse powder is probably why shapeways does the reorganizing of all parts so that they have very little powder at the end that can't be reused. More intertwined parts, more profit.
A couple of stands over from ours at TCT, there was a company doing a clean-out of their SLS printer during the end of show break-down - I should have photographed it - the guy was in a full head-to-toe 'bunny suit', complete with overboots, a full-face breathing mask system, and was connected to the machine via an antistatic strap. I'm guessing that dust gets everywhere, and the particle size makes it a possible fire/explosion hazard (the antistatic strap) under the wrong circumstances.
I imagine the antistatic is as much to prevent him getting a static charge and getting covered by dust from head to toe than anything else. But yeah, that powder has to be horribly messy.
Overall a nice review although some important errors. SLS was invented by DTM, Texas who were taken over by 3D Systems. EOS were not the original or the inventor, in fact there were years of court cases between the two companies. White SLS is not naturally white, it has Titanium Dioxide added to make it white. The aged yellow is actually its natural colour. The powder is pretty inert and tests have shown that it isn't harmful to humans, the particles are large enough to be ingested rather than going into your lungs. Saying that i would never work a machine without PPE. Finally the reason the cheaper machines use non-white powders is not to do with laser power but to do with the laser frequency.
SLS just happens to be the name of a rocket that fell to the beast of sunk cost, and never made it off the launchpad. I mean, it might take off next year, but it's dubious.
Great video! 😊 When I see this powder, I think micro-plastic, environment and health. It must be viritualy impossible to handle this powder in a home without spilling a bit. And where does the spill go? I guess in the lungs, and somewere in the nature. Which type of 3D printing technology is best when we take the environment in consideration? Thanks again for another great video.
Very well articulated and well rounded presentation, and summary, like how you cover the technical aspects and facts, and bring it back into simple relative terms, and not get lost in the jargon, thank you! :)
Seriously, you think people are going to spend all that time getting all the powder off ? Theres a reason FDM printing became popular and its because with PLA its non toxic and low mess.
The powder removal doesn't have to take a lot of time. Drop the block of used powder in a bag, gently slosh it around, then blow off a tiny bit of remaining powder with your shop vac blower. Removing support material takes vastly longer. It's all just the mentality, and what you're okay with doing. I don't detail my 3D prints, I use them for functional things.
I've seen sls printer that has the first stage cleaning built in, two armports in the case, and an vacuum hose inside. glove up, vacuum the remaining build material (avoids contamination with dust and other particles as well). And then take the part out for final rinsing. avoids quite a bit of the mess.
It's the granddaddy of printing. Also used in metals (under different power and powder requirements). I think they even used parts in aerospace that were done in 3D printing (metal, not the ratchet key from the space station).
I love the precision of it... (a good portion of my potential uses for a 3d printer require rather high precision) And the idea you could dye the white stuff... But the cost and mess of it! Ouch!
Thank you for your great thoughts and inputs. I want a new printer, but I suspect the perfect printer does not exist... FDM is cheap and simple to run, but with ugly bridges and supports. SLA looks wonderful, but is brittle, messy, smelly and expensive. SLS looks nice and sturdy but is grainy, dusty and expensive
IMHO the best solutions for surface quality, is ether the Saffire or the Milkshake3D. Both top-down SLA so support structures are more manageable. IF I had to buy one today it would be the Saffire.
Thanks for the update always good to know where the 3D printing world is going. As you say to much cost and mess at the moment, so we will stay clear for now.
Very good video, full of great info; thanks that! It's nice to see how 3d printing is improving more and more. The market is still quite fragmented (same with VR at this moment) and until it standardizes, the prices are gonna be prohibitive for the regular Joe. But leaving that out, as long as plastic is so expensive I don't see them becoming a mainstream product. I remember when we all used to have one or two regular 2D printers at home. Now a cartridge is more expensive than a brand new machine.
I agree with you that SLS is definitely the best (and my favorite) form of additive manufacturing. With the strength, volume, and materials that can be used it's certainly a staple in the industrial 3d printing world. As for home use, I don't think it will ever be a viable option for a hobbyist unless they were using it for a business of some sort. SLA and DLP systems are a bit more home friendly, but with the mess of resins and such they definitely have a niche market as well. The video was great as well, and sure to spark a lot of good discussion.
Hey Angus, great info you give here. What would be the weight of a fully filled chamber in the Sinter-it, meaning... If I fully utilize the chamber with multiple prints, what would be the price to start the project?
Not that it really matters, but as a point of clarity, EOS did not invent selective laser sintering. It was a company called DTM in Austin Texas. They were eventually bought out by 3-D systems.
I think that 5 axis 3D printers is the future. A 3D extrusion printer that can rotate the print at every axis can also do without support material. In addition it could also be used to lay down complex patterns of continuous carbon fibers for reinforcement. You should do a show on the future of 5 axis printers.
I don't think that it'll beat FDM any time soon (especially not in the hobby scene) but metal powder sintering machines, if they ever become consumer friendly, would be amazing because nothing else can really print metal
Yes, I've heard that tech is based on SLS mixed with inkjet tech allowing for full-color prints. From what I've seen, it's amazing. Hope you have a deep pocket!
The different colours are due to the wavelength of the lasers used. The expensive EOS machines use high powered CO2 lasers operates in the 10.6 um wavelength, PA12 absorbs well in that range, downside is the laser system is expensive and takes up a lot of space. The desktop SLS machines use a compact, low cost, laser diode, operates @ 405 nm, powders need to be black in colour to absorb at this wavelength. So the desktop systems use PA12 blended with carbon black.
SLS may be not only the future of printing, it is also the past. When I saw the first 3D printed parts, way more than 20 years ago, on tv or industrial fair, metal or plastic, they where SLS printed. And thank you for this detailed explanation. When seen on tv or web clips, they never show the whole process. allways thought it would be much simpler and dreamed of sometimes own one by myself.
Great video Angus, the fact you mentioned the powder product shouldn't be handled in a closed residential environment is very important, keep up the great content and be safe !
Great Video, Do any of the companies offer advice on what to do with the old powder ? I'm guessing that it would end up as landfill as I can't imagine anyone would be able to recycle the powder due to impurities and the relatively small quantities that they could harvest from users.
HP's Multi Jet Fusion technology also uses Nylon Pa12 material and barely creates any waste powder, same goes for binder jetting. Have you looked into that? In addition to that, generally all powder based parts have to be sand blasted just to clean them, so there no way around. However, depending on the blasting media (glass beads, nut shells, graphite) you can achieve various types of finishes.
I Have seen the HP MJF in person. Seems very promising and innovative. There is 2 or 3 different types of materials available right now, (nylon, something "glassy"like, the a more flexible one.) I asked about ABS, but the machine does not get to a high enough temperature for it. A user pretty much needs to use both a printer and their post processing station. The Post processing station is built to cool the print in a controlled manner, and is said to mostly eliminate shrinkage.
I work with MJF. It is fast and creates close to isotropic parts. However, the speed and strength comes at higher materials costs compared to SLS. You need the powder and two agents which are very pricy. Under full load you can run through 4-5k$ in materials per week which means that you could end up paying the machine's price per year just in consumables. Tolerances of 200 microns are not great either but it is one of the most promising technology platforms out there at this stage.
It seems like the Cons way way out weigh the Pros of SLS. It sounds like you might get more accurate parts with a nicer coating but then every single other thing is worse.
Appalling technology, abysmal run costs, ridiculously messy. Amazing what crap people are prepared to put up with. I guess it'll be another 5 years before an affordable high quality 3d consumer printing technology is available.
The fuse-1 will be sold at $16,500. For that price I'm buying a mill AND a lathe to keep it company. And you can't even re-use all of the powder you paid $270 for. Holy shit.
The difference in color is due to the material manufacturer, EOS uses white, which is the base color of the powder that usually is issued by BASF. To correct you as well, the cooling down process of a chamber depends on the building time of the print, if a print is 30 hours long, it will take 15 hours to cool down, so pretty much the half the time of printing. The shrinkage is manageable, all can be adjusted on the program provided PSW or MAGICS when preparing the platform.
Most people find SLA to be too messy. SLS is like resin printing, but you get powder fucking everywhere. You have a mini beach on your desk and sand is getting everywhere. Unless the powder removal process is entirely automated, I can't see these being a desktop machine to replace FDM or SLA.
Talking about reusing material and percentages, couldn't you take for instance 1 kg of used material and mix it with 2 kg of new material? Your percentage would be 33% yet waste would be 0. I like the parts you showed, I don't see myself spending that kind of money.
BASF has a 316L stainless steel infused filament (about $400-500 US), that can be printed on most typical (CRS10 for example). You print (high width to height ratio design is best, 100% infill), send it off to de bind and sinter. Very, very, cool. Can be bought from MatterHackers).
seems like a lot of reasons why SLS is NOT the future of 3D printing and very very few reasons why it's better or how it will evolve to become better than other technologies.....
Material costs are way too high, but expected given the relatively low demand. I wonder how expensive it is to product plastic powder.. And there are challenges with materials like nylon, but what about PLA powder that doesn't shrink? And I'm convinced that a closed-loop system to minimize mess is possible. These are engineering challenges, but not insurmountable ones. The benefits in quality are well worth the exploration, we just need some open-source trailblazers to prove out effective design and make it available for manufacture.
Yeah, this will either drastically drop in price at some point over the next few years or a more affordable tech that essentially does the same thing will take it's place. Unsustainable technology prices are almost always destined for failure or assimilation into the consumer market. Just look at what a 40" 1080p HDTV would have run you 10 years ago as oppose to the Sony Bravia that you can get now for like $300.00 or less if you know where to look. That's over a 70% decrease in price over a decade for a technology that is relevant and will continue to be relevant for a while to come. It's just a waiting game.
I love the video, but pleeeeease don't ever say PLA when talking about industrial 3D printers. XD At least compare them to high quality ABS. I'd love to some day have a sintering machine.
A little bit of a price jump? Damn, i paid 200 for my fdm printer and i love it. Cant see myself spending 9k on an sls that prints smaller volumes than i would like. If it could print 10x10x12 then maybe haha. Plus i would want to use metal powders
I build dioramas as a hobby ..looking for a system to print 1/35 scale figures ....SLS is a no go for me...SLA printer is something I'm considering. ...possibly selling a few figures at some point ...been watching the prices and I believe an SLA is for me.....thank you for your informative videos I enjoy watching n learning......
SLS and resin printers will NOT be the future of 3D printing - it's crazy to use so much poisonous/toxic material instead of bio plastic in a world which is trying to eliminate non-recycleble waste... For professionals maybe, but not for home. SLS is difficult especially when children would like to print something..so is this the same problem with the toxic resin printers with children at home (also when the will not print..you have to be as careful with resign as with an acid).
6:40: Here's the definitive answer on why there's a difference in powder color between the industrial (EOS) machine and the desktop (Sinterit and Formlabs) machines: It's not the laser power; it's the laser wavelength. The EOS systems use a CO2 laser (with 10s of watts of power). CO2 lasers emit at around 10 microns (um) wavelength. The desktop systems use either fiber or diode lasers, emitting at around 1.0 um. At 10 um wavelength, white-colored polyamide (Nylon) absorbs quite well. But that same white color does NOT absorb so well at 1.0 um. However, coloring the material black or dark grey does the trick for light absorption at 1.0 um. The desktop system makers, in order to use lower-powered and cheaper laser types - to keep their systems' key-component costs low - were forced to go to the dark nylons. BTW, the higher power in the EOS CO2 laser does nothing in terms of process quality; as you noted, because the powder bed and chamber are heated to just shy of the material's fusing temperature, the laser doesn't have to deliver a huge amount of power (or more precisely, power density) to kick the material over into sintering. The higher power level is almost all about process speed or throughput.
Makers MUSE, I really enjoyed this video. You touched on points regarding the SLS technology of the Sinterit Lisa and Formlabs that I have never heard of let alone considered. As your post was initially Oct 12,2017, do you have any updates or follow-ups to advancement of this technologies by these two companies. Additionally, have you ventured acquired either of these machines yourself?
Well Dear Angus - Goood work, I'm waiting for this kind of compare - I'm happy if technology is going futher but in this time I think we still have to wait of real no problemo SLS (or different technology - robust 3Dprinting) technology - specialy in my field of work like orthopaedical special insoles. Best regards from POLAND ;-D
SLS is only practical for metal fabrication atm. Even so there is a healthy amount of machining that needs to be done afterward. FDM is just way more efficient for softer materials like abs pla. You should do a vid on HT 3D printing like Ultem and poly carbonate.
thoughts: 1. could the chamber temperature be lowered enough to not damage the unused powder by using a higher powered/frequency (blue indigo instead of red)/pulse rate laser? 2. is nylon the only plastic being worked on as a potential material. could ABS or PBT or PLA or Ultem or something else be used? I so want to see EBS (Electron Beam Sintering) get cheap enough for, if not home use (because of the fumes and power requirements), then makerspace use. edit: OK, I just found this: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-HQ6DcuvGeas.html given that PEEK is SLS printable, other than price, why aren't more SLS companies trying to work with it?
Don't turn it on, take it apaart! I only want to know how powerful the lasers are. Fuse 1 UK price ="starting at £12,959". I didn''t realise Brexit had done so much harm to the £ already. 10W 1066nm fiber laser. 0.2mm spot size. That sounds doable with diodes
The quality and usability of SLS parts far exceeds home fdm systems. I see this as a fantastic solution for small production runs. Injection tooling is expensive and moq super high. Maybe not ideal for home use, but great for small business.👍
Two things... First, if you are spending a ton of cash at Shapeways, SLS *might* be right for you, but you have to run the numbers. Second, with the cost of SLS coming down, I believe we'll see someone like Amazon get into 3D Printing game and give shapeways some competition. Imagine ordering a 3D object from Amazon and picking it up at an Amazon Locker, or a Whole Foods... :D
Did you mean to say, 10 milliwatt or did you mean to say 10 watt. Because you said *only* 10 watts. That amount of power is actually pretty strong. At that, they would pretty much be doing SLM not SLS Edit, On the specs it says 10 Watts. I guess they would heat up the chamber to increase print times drastically. I'm in the process of designing my own SLS system for well under $500 using a 1 watt 445nm laser, some galvos, and 3 steppers. If 1 watt ends up no being strong enough, I'll try 3 than 6 watts. I think I can get away without a heated build chamber if I sacrifice print speed. This could help prevent shrinkage, and definitly fix the reusing powder problem as well.
HP's MJF >>> SLS. MJF is an isotropic MELT, not sinter, layer time is factors faster than SLS, AND allows for voxel control (selective additives and color). SLS not even on same level as MJF.
