Have you heard us nerds talk about 3d printing but wondered how it works and why people are saying it is transforming traditional manufacturing?
Well, I got into 3d printing a few years ago. Primarily to tinker and see what I could make. The Trash Stash is the first product I'm actually making available for sale. So you see, 3d printing is bringing small quantity manufacturing to just about anyone. It also dramatically reduces the time from an idea, prototype and on to production ready products.
The video below is a timelapse of almost a whole day of printing on one of my 3d printers. It's about 10 hours condensed into a 1 minute long timelapse so you can see how the products are formed.
3d printing creates a real object from a 3d CAD file that is "sliced" into layers. Each of these layers is geometrically transcribed into code that are instructions for the 3d printer to draw out one layer at a time. Each layer is about 0.2mm tall, so it takes many passes to build up the model into the object you recognise.
In the video you see the two components for the Trash Stash. First is the outer casing and then the inner spool in the second half of the video.
What you don't see here are the countless hours of CAD work, trial and error and testing of components for functionality but also reliability and speed of printing. A 6 or 10 hour print probably doesn't sound very speedy to you, but trust me, in 3d printing that's not much at all.
I hope you enjoyed this behind the scenes look. If you did, like this post and drop me a note below. I want to bring you interesting content in addition to the webshop here.
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