3D Printing Materials

Flexible Materials

The flexible materials, variety of colors and durometer's. The black is a soft rubberlike flexible material is great for applications that require significant flexibility and elasticity. The great material is a hard rubberlike material is great for applications requiring some classes the. The blue material is a mix between the two previous materials offering exceptional elongation at break and excellent toughness and durability with a high resistance to tearing.

Transparent Materials 

These materials are based on acrylic photopolymer technology and they are transparent and suitable for a wide range of rigid models. She uses involved visibility of liquid flow or internal details when needed. These materials exhibit elongation breakup of up to 20% as well as good impact strength. These models can also be chrome plated, drilled, machined, used in molds, or painted.

Rigid Materials

These materials are rigid and opaque, they are able to produce models that look closely like target plastics. All these materials are rigid with a hardness of shore D and a Rockwell hardness of and becoming white, blue, and black.

Polypropylene-like Materials

This material mimics the appearance and some of the characteristics of polypropylene plastic. Typical applications are automotive components, loudspeakers, laboratory equipment, and reusable containers.

Rigid Filled Urethanes - Often referred to as filled fast-cast resins, these products are often used for making molds, holding fixtures and architectural models.

Hearing Aid  Materials

This set of materials is a production ready system for hearing a manufacturing. The material comes in clear, rose clear, and skintone.

Multi-material systems

Refers to the new object Connex 500 3-D printing system that can produce models and textured into materials at the same time. These materials can have different characteristics from each other. This would allow you to put rigid base and the rubberized grip over in one build.

3D Printing Finishing

Standard (Class 1A)

Finish applied to all Models

1. Remove supports
2. Beadblast

Improved (Class 2A)

Finish that is applied to models that are for engineering or product review

1. Remove supports
2. Sand Entire Model with 220 – 320
3. Beadblast
4. Finish wet sand with 320

Primer  + 2 days  (Class 3A)

A primer finish will require that all the build lines on a part be sanded off. The part complexity and geometry will dictate the cost of this step. Typically only the outer facing surfaces will be finished to this level unless otherwise specified. The procedure for Primed finish is as follows:

1. Sand with 220 to 320 until all build lines are removed
2. Lightly coat with heavy build automotive primer then sand with 320 to 600 until the primer is removed and all surface imperfections have been filled.
3. Apply 2 – 3 coats of primer on the part and wet sand with 600 in between coats to create a uniform surface

Presentation  + 4 days or more depending on complexity (Class 4A)

A paint job can consist of one color, multiple colors, or customer graphics created via airbrushing or venial graphics. The general adopted color matching systems for paints is Pantone Color Match or, in some cases PPG. For custom graphics customer can supply the RBG numbers that are used in graphics programs to produce the color. The procedure for paintings as follows:

1. Part must be finished to primed level
2. Custom Color Numbers must be provided to color match, if multicolor models are required jpeg’s depicting paint scheme must be provided. Additional is graphics are required the native graphic files is needed (Photoshop, Illustrator, Corel, PDF)

Note: Painting does at a thickness of up to .005” too the parts and design considerations should be made.

Custom Finishes

WaterClear +4 days  

WaterClear Models can be produced using the PC Like resins that are clear. These Models can be sanded down and seal with clear coat to produce a transparent part. The procedure is as follows:

1. Sand off all build lines with nothing less than 420 grit.
2. Increase grit to 600 and repeat
3. Seal Part with Clear Coat

Note: this process is very labor intensive and takes many hours of sanding to achieve a quality finish. For parts that do not need to be perfectly clear see quick clear process

QuickClear - + 2 days  

QuickClear is an economical alternative to the WaterClear process. With the quick clear procedure all of the build lines are not completely removed. This will result in a part with increased transparency but will not produce a part that is optically clear. The procedure is as follows:

1. Remove supports and sand with 220 – 320 grit
2. Seal with Clear Coat

Dyes +2 Days

All resins can be dyed or tinted. The Clear resins are most popular for this service. The goal is to make them look like a lenses. The issue with dying is that you are introducing water into the part so there is a possibility that this can affect the parts dimensional accuracy. Some SLA Materials can absorb up to 0.25% of their volume in water when submerged for 24 hours

Nickel Plating +3 days

SLA parts can be nickel plated using the following procedure:

1. Remove supports and sand with 320 grit to remove exterior build lines
2. Paint with conductive paint and electroplate with copper coating
3. Electroplate with nickel coating

Note: Nickel Plating can add up to 50 microns of thickness to the part. The newly plated part will now have improved mechanical properties. The metal plating will provide a increased resistant to chemical, improved heat deflection, waterproof model, provided electrical conductivity, and improve the mechanical properties up to 3x the impact strength.

RP Tempering + 2 Days

Any SLA material can have RP tempering applied to it. This coating will increase the mechanical and physical properties of the material up to 3 times. The process infiltrates the prototype changing its properties on a molecular level.