Which materials can be used to 3D print?

Creating a three dimensional product is made possible by a special 3D printer, although you could also employ a 3D print service to turn your design into an actual object. For this process you, of course, also need to pick a material. This can be quite a hard decision, because there are quite a lot of materials that can be used for 3D printing New York City. To make it even worse, more and more materials are possibilities due to the constant developments and innovations in this industry. At the moment you could decide to use one of the three options that are mentioned below.

Titanium

It is possible to use metal to develop a three dimensional object with the help of a special 3D printer. One of these metal options is titanium. If you decide to use this material then you will have to employ a specific method, this is called Powder Bed Fusion. This method consists of multiple technologies, although titanium probably will use either SLM or DMLS. SLM is the abbreviation for Selective Laser Melting, while DMLS stands for Direct Metal Laser Sintering. 3D printed objects of titanium can have functional purposes, such as tools, but also look good, like jewelry for example.

PLA

PLA is an abbreviation and means Polylactic Acid, which can be used in combination with a 3D printer. It is a type of plastic that is made out of natural resources. Because of this, PLA is seen as relatively environmentally friendly since it can be biologically degraded, which is not possible with the most plastics unfortunately. Polylactic Acid is thus much better for the environment than other materials. On top of that, it does not smell too bad while it is being printed. Other plastics often stink during the process of 3D printing, but PLA does not have this characteristic.

Stainless steel

It has already been mentioned that metal can be used to 3D print an object. This can be done with titanium, but stainless steel is also an option. This is a cheap metal material and will be employed with the help of the previously mentioned method Powder Bed Fusion. However, stainless steel can also be used through Binder Jetting. This is a different technology to 3D print a metal item. Either way, a powder of stainless steel will be implemented during this interesting process.

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