If you were wondering what the support material looks like

Hey All,

This is what the samples in the material pages looked like before the support material was removed. I think it pretty clearly illustrates how making these types of geometry works.

Are there any classes of shapes that wouldn't require any support material? Maybe things like cylindrical cups or pyramidal shapes? I'm wondering because it seems like the supports might leave something like sprue marks except a whole bunch more of them.

Eiffel tower, the classic demo for SLA/DLP printers.

What I'm more curious about it is: How do you go about removing those supports?

Mercury would dissolve it easily enough, but I guess they will prefer to use some sort of Dremel tool. Would not surprise me if this material saw lots of "part cannot be cleaned" rejections...

@mvezza: In the other topic it was just stated that the machines are from SLM Solutions. Two years ago they delivered a machine (SLM 280) to a company where I did an internship. I hope they upgraded their advise, back then it was 'Do you have a screwdriver and a hammer?'

@MrNibbles: I designed a little rocket that only had 5 wires of support, which where easily removed with pliers. It was printed upside down, so with one support on the top and 4 on the edge. You always need some support structure to attach the model to the building plate. The support for this model was only necessary to avoid the model to get moved by the wiper during the recoating.

This model is around 7 cm high and printed in Inconel, but also printed in Al before.

Thanks for sharing Daphne!

Have you tried polishing it? the surface looks a little rougher than what we have in the office so far.

I haven't polished any rockets, but I tried polishing some other Al parts with sandpaper, a dremel and polishing pasta. I actually spend the better half of a day trying to polish the front two parts of the airplane. However, I could not reach all surfaces on the bottom (something with complex shapes..) so the last part was sand blasted. Please note that this was just a prototype and that it doesn't actually reflect the quality of the company. The used material is AlSi10Mg.

Daphne the machine is http://stage.slm-solutions.com/index.php?slm-500_en I guess it is higher res than 250 one.

That explains the first photos Andrew listed up.

No the resolution is not very different. I was at Euromold where SLM solutions had this big stand and I asked what was new. It has a bigger building platform, x by x by 500 mm instead of x by x by 280 mm. Creative naming. Oh, and it has more lasers.

Also to double up on that, we maybe be using both machines depending on the order, similarly to how we use EOS P1's P3,s and P7's in White Strong and Flexible.

I'd never base your design strictly on one machine's capabilities, but make it general enough for the a range of machines.

Daphne how big is that airplane ? I don`t get the scale of it from the photo

What are the issues with support removal on internal features. For example, for a part such as a turbocharger volute with a snail shell type profile (tapered tube). Do the supports have to be line of sight?

Do you see the stripes on the rocket keychain in the left corner? The big stripes are centimeters.

Got it!

Great, really looking forward to seeing what this can do. Very excited at the possibilities it offers.

As an aside, has Shapeways considered offering "As printed" so that we do the support material removal and any tidying up ourselves? That could significantly reduce the labour handling on the items where one is making components for things rather than finished items to sell directly to others..

Hey Susan-Parker,


Glad you're interested!

It is certainly possible that we could offer that, but the goal behind piloting this material is to learn how to efficiently manufacture Aluminum as a shopper ready material. Since end customers wouldn't be interested in removing the supports, we're keen on making sure that we can do it first before we just offer it in a situation where only makers (people making personal projects) would find it useful.

Hi Andrew,

For the web based direct to end customer, absolutely. And in the short term whilst everyone is getting to know the process and capabilities, again absolutely; always good not to overly complicate matters.

However for the longer term there are other things I can think of where subsequent machining is going to be part of the process, so not having the cost overhead of support removal could make that more accessible.

For example, in my work in the Department of Physics at Imperial College London I come across instances where being able to custom make "near finished" structures could be really interesting e.g. narrow band IR spectrometer for laser beam monitoring (in our group we do femto and atto second pulsed laser science). We can of course make prototypes in SLA nylon, but plastics are not stable enough if one is making things that are effectively sitting inside the arms of interferometers which are inside vacuum chambers.

Anyway, that is something for a future discussion.

Many thanks.

Best,
Susan.

absolutely! It would be a very interesting offering to makers in the future and could help with labor/leadtimes.