What is 3D Printing?
3D printing is an additive manufacturing process that creates 3D objects from digital models by depositing material (often plastic) layer by layer. It is a simple, fast, and relatively cheap method of producing simple or complex objects - you can print (almost) anything. Normally, plastic material is used in small-scale 3D printers that are appropriate for personal use, but other materials such as metal or even concrete can be used in larger scale applications. 3D printing allows you to quickly make personalised objects.
See here for information on the different 3D printers we have available at uCreate.
What could I use 3D printing for?
- Printing replicas of physical objects.
- Creating personalised objects.
- Creating multi-coloured or multi-material objects.
- Creating educational materials.
- Printing high quality miniatures.
- Prototyping.
- Architectural models.
How long does 3D printing take?
How long will a 3D print take is almost the same as asking, how long is a piece of string. It will entirely depend on a variety of parameters:
- Whether you are printing the file yourself on our self-service printers or if you're submitting it to either of our 3D print queues.
- The printer you are using. Printing on the Bambu Lab X1-Carbon is usually faster than using an Ultimaker.
- How detailed you want the print to be. The more detail, the longer your print will take.
- The size of the model you are printing. Larger prints usually take longer.
- The number of materials you are printing with. Printing with multiple materials will take longer.
In the example below, see how printing the same 30mm cube goes from a 20 minute to almost 13 hour print when made up of different colours.
It is normal for large or very high detail prints to take over 24 hours but if you are unsure of want to cut down on print time, ask a member of uCreate staff or attend our 3D print training.
When you slice your file for printing, you will be able to see how long the print will take.
How do I start 3D printing?
3D printing is very easy to get started with. To start 3D printing, you first need an STL file to 3D print. There are multiple ways you can get a file for printing, see below.
Once you have your model, you will choose which printer to use, slice it and then upload it to the 3D printer.
If you have never 3D printed before, we recommend attending our 3D print training to learn how to slice your files and begin printing.
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There are many different 3D modelling softwares, ranging from beginner friendly to industry level. For getting started with 3D modelling, we recommend Tinkercad. Other softwares we would recommend are Blender and Fusion 360.
uCreate has technicians specialising in Fusion360 and Blender, as well as a Blender training and online resources.
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A digital copy of any object can be created using 3D scanning. By completing a 3D scan, highly detailed and accurate models of real objects can be made in a very short time (much faster and potentially higher detail than modelling from scratch).
3D scanning can also be used to create models which can then be downloaded from the internet. For example, the scan the world project.
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It is often possible to find similar (or exact) pre-existing and free versions of your desired model already online. Even if not perfect these models can be edited to suit your needs in your preferred 3D modelling software, so take a look online before you spend hours making something from scratch.
Popular sites are Thingiverse, Cults3D and Printables.