{"id":1215,"date":"2012-02-15T14:11:09","date_gmt":"2012-02-15T14:11:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shapeways.com\/blog\/archives\/1215-3d-printing-technologies-explained.html"},"modified":"2014-07-03T17:15:58","modified_gmt":"2014-07-03T17:15:58","slug":"3d-printing-technologies-explained","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shapeways.com\/blog\/3d-printing-technologies-explained","title":{"rendered":"3D Printing Technologies Explained"},"content":{"rendered":"

At Shapeways we use a range of different 3D printing technologies to create your 3D prints depending on the material<\/a> you choose. We use terms like White Strong & Flexible<\/a>, Frosted Ultra Detail<\/a> and Full Color Sandstone<\/a> to describe the material properties, not the process or material brand name so that people with no experience can better choose the materials to use for 3D printing. On the materials page<\/a> you can dig in to get more detail on the materials and processes used to have a deeper understanding. <\/p>\n

Shapeways co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Robert Schouwenburg<\/a> has a personal blog<\/a> he uses to keep track of his thoughts on 3D printing, online creation & personal fabrication which is a great source of information.  We will occasionally ‘reblog’ his posts as they are a great resource and offer insight into some of the thinking behind Shapeways. The first we would like to post is 3D Printing Technologies Explained<\/a> which, ahh, explains some of the current 3D printing technologies.<\/p>\n

The rest of this blog post will be a direct copy of Robert’s post from July 21st 2011.<\/p>\n

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In this post, I would like to give an overview of the 3D printing
\ntechnologies which exist today. Each of these technologies deserves a
\nblog post on its own, but I want to start with an overview.<\/p>\n

While writing this – long – blog post, I realized that I needed to
\nintroduce some concepts first before I explained the specifics of each
\nof the technologies.<\/p>\n