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3D Printing Has A BIG Supply Problem...But It's Not What You Think It Is.

5/25/2022

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The 3d printing industry has a problem, a really big problem and it's one that almost nobody knows or talks about.

Let’s rant here for just a moment about this situation. Slant 3d operates one of the largest 3d printing farms in the world. We purchase thousands of pounds of filament every month from a number of different suppliers. Over the entire history of the company, there has been one problem that has continuously been an issue with every single supplier that we have worked with, it's color.

this is the exact same product, these are multiple spools of the same product with supposedly the same color but anybody can see this is not the same color. This is a giant problem if we are producing tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of products. Our clients expect them to all be the same color and we expect all the spools to be the same color. Filament manufacturers are not generally driven to make the same color. 

Here's the reason for this and we kind of half understand it. The vast majority of filament on spools that are purchased in the industry is purchased by individual consumers who have a printer in the garage. Someone in the garage who's making a few items for Etsy or just hobby items for the around the house. They will not notice that one spool of green is slightly different from another spool of green. Since those people do not notice and they are the fundamental industry driver for buying spools of filament, the manufacturers of filament are not incentivized to really create high levels of consistency across their material. Some manufacturers do just implicitly or at least say they do. 

For example like Prusa or Color Fab, those kind of guys works very hard to make sure that color is consistent across the process, using lean principles and a colorimeter at the end of the extrusion line. This is to make sure that colors are consistent. Most anybody else is eyeballing it and these are people ranging from somebody who started by making just cord and is now making filament to professional filament makers who are consistently producing colors but know that no one's going to notice that it's a variation. Up into even very large multi-billion dollar companies produce inconsistent colors because it just doesn't matter in general. somebody buying one or two spools will not notice or will not care. We understand at slant 3d that we're in the minority of clients. We buy huge amounts of filament we're not necessarily the highest margin customer or even the highest component of market share for many of these suppliers but here's the thing the industry in order to continue to grow and in order to legitimize itself against other manufacturing processes like injection molding or machining those manufacturing processes have exceptionally tight quality control. They are able to make a thousand or billion legos that are all the same color of yellow very consistently. The 3d printing industry is currently not meeting that standard. This is preventing large-scale production of parts like the slant 3D print farms and other print farms like it from consistently producing reliable results for clients. There are times even when we do an exact Pantone match and order that color specifically that the filament maker will not be able to mix consistently or monitor it consistently. The intensity of color varies up and down.

 This is a huge problem because it is preventing 3d printing from being as massive of an option to all other forms of manufacturing as it could be. This is something that Slant 3D does not control exclusively, we are dependent upon suppliers for this. Suppliers are dropping the ball this is why we manufacture a good portion of our material in-house and we'll continue to expand that because this is unacceptable it is not difficult to make sure that color is consistent it simply requires the will to make the color consistent. Yes, the consumers will not notice but it will lead to a much larger market opportunity down the line. As giant printer farms or Slant 3D itself continues to expand and other companies like it, who need to produce millions of parts, at least need the same color. Eliminate this variable, it's very easy.  This is just a letter to suppliers to reliably produce your material and do your job. This is a huge problem for the industry that most people don't notice or know about but it is hurting the industry.

Hope everybody has a great day. Let us know what you think down in the comments. Let us know if you've run into this before. If you've noticed it in orders of filament that you've gotten before. What kind of suppliers caused issues. If you know suppliers that are really good and reliable or if you are a supplier, please reach out to us because we're happy to speak to you and buy a couple of pallets of material from you if you're able to make colors consistently. Thank you everybody have a great day.
Happy 3D printing!

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First Thoughts on Ultimaker and Makerbot Merger

5/13/2022

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It was just announced that MakerBot and Ultimaker are merging, into well it might be Ultrabot, it might be Maker Maker who knows. This merger is actually really weird because we don't really see what the one is getting from the other. MakerBot is actually owned by Stratasys. Stratasys bought MakerBot several years ago and since then has had to take about a one billion dollar haircut and write off from owning MakerBot because it's been a wildly bad decision.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        MakerBot made machines that nobody really wanted but Stratasys has been pushing to make MakerBot kind of the prosumer type of printer brand, that is very similar to what Ultimaker is. There are synergies there but it's still odd because we don't know how it's helping Ultimaker. It appears that  Ultimaker might just be in a bad spot and trying to find more ways to expand its market reach by getting the customer list that MakerBot has and just shoving Ultimate current’s machines into there. 

Stratasys is basically selling MakerBot to Ultimaker in exchange for stock and Ultimaker so Stratasys will own a portion of the new “Ultabot” Company. Ultimaker will be able to have access to Stratasys which has a great customer base and a very strong position within the FDM type market,  the prosumer, and eventually mass-production relative to the professional market of people who would be utilizing these machines. So it makes sense that Ultimaker would do that in order to get access to more customers but Ultimaker is what would be considered probably a fairly premium brand. They're in the realm of the kind of an Apple-type brand in the context of the 3d printing industry. MakerBot on the other hand is very much not. If Ultimaker is Apple, MakerBot is a bad Microsoft. MakerBot has had a very negative connotation for the last several years around their machines because they are not good machines. They have not been historical good machines that have been favored by the industry or by customers. This is why Stratasys took the haircut but Ultimaker can breathe some fresh RD and some value into the assets of Makerbot. There's value there to Stratasys and Stratasys has a customer base that is fairly locked in that they can then give to Ultimaker so that's how it makes sense but the brand cohesiveness is not there. I would imagine that MakerBot might just disappear completely and Ultimaker just absorbs it completely because MakerBot has no real brand power out there right now.

 Let us know what you think about this merger down in the comments. Let us know anything you think about how it's going down, why they did it, and how you think it's going to go because we'd love to hear what you think and see how this all plays out! Have a great day everybody!

​
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Can 3-D Printed Parts be Waterproof?

5/10/2022

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A common question in the 3-D printing world is, can 3-D printed parts be waterproof? Let's discuss it.  
 
The common wisdom is that since 3d printing is built up in layers. It can't be made waterproof because those layers allow water to pass through, therefore 3d printed parts are porous. This is incorrect, it's a misconception, that is easy to get a hold of but really isn't true, in the context of how 3d printing works because it's kind of a remnant of old FDM 3d printing that wasn't very reliable or very consistent which could potentially leak. Anymore it's really not an issue but there are some caveats to that.  

 Number one can you make a floating part? Absolutely! 


All of these are perfectly waterproof products that were made with FDM 3d printing. It's really not that odd that 3d printing can be waterproof. If you put down a layer of plastic and then you put down another consistent layer of plastic on it and then a layer on top of that and then they sandwich together, it’s very similar to using glue in a gasket or any sort of gasket lube that can be used to seal up a machined part. In both cases, you're just putting down a layer of plastic and then compressing it. A 3d printer is able to put down a hot layer and if it is consistent, it merges consistently with the layer below it. There are a few other tricks that you can do in order to get a good seal. You can also as you're going along not just do a single layer that has to seal itself but do multiple layers so that you get thickness on the part. This allows more redundancy should one of those individual beads be compromised in some kind of way. 

We've worked really hard on waterproof 3d printing up in high-pressure applications that we continue to work on it right now and push the technology further. For high pressure, it is very difficult, but it is not impossible. The reason it's difficult is that the larger the part becomes the more opportunity there is for a defect in the part that could cause a leak. If you're doing waterproof or high-pressure applications generally you want to keep it down to no larger than fist size. If you go larger than that it's exceptionally hard because you have tens, of thousands, if not millions of tool moves. If a few of them go wrong in just the right way you can have a leak. Very often the leak is exceptionally small and cannot be seen until it reaches very high pressure.  

To summarize, lower pressure applications are very easy. Floating objects are very easy so yes 3d printed parts can absolutely be waterproof. It just helps if you know what you are doing. There's no reason that they physically can't be able to be waterproof.   

So yes, you can make waterproof 3d printed parts!

​Happy Printing!

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