3D Printing Industry Review of the Year May 2018

3D printing in May 2018 saw the launch of our second annual 3D Printing Industry Awards (2019 nominations now open) and marked the 10th Anniversary of the RepRap movement. In applications, some of the most popular articles included medical breakthroughs. We were also given the exclusive opportunity to see the latest machines coming to market. […]

Long Term Home Review of Ultimaker’s New S5 Professional 3D Printer

At Hannover Messe this past April, desktop 3D printing leader Ultimaker introduced its first new 3D printer in two years – the S5, an expansion to its professional 3D printer portfolio. Ultimaker reseller Dynamism showcased the new S5 at RAPID + TCT that same month, as did Ultimaker itself. The desktop system, with a 330 x 240 x 300 mm build volume, has all kinds of great features, including dual extrusion, an intuitive touchscreen integrated into the front panel, and an enclosed front with tinted glass doors…so imagine my excitement when I learned that Dynamism would be shipping me a review unit!

Full disclosure – while I’ve completed 3D prints before at Dayton’s 3D printing bar, this would be my first time setting up and operating a 3D printer all on my own. So when the gigantic box, and a smaller one of extra filament, arrived on my porch, I was a little…okay, a lot…intimidated. In fact, I was so concerned about not having anything pull focus from the unboxing and set-up process that the gigantic carton just sat in my dining room for a few days until the opportune moment. At 3DPrint.com we do not charge money for reviews. This is my own experience and my own opinion.

I’ll say this – the S5 was extremely well packaged. I was amazed at the sheer amount of used packing material I had at the end of the process, but also not surprised; I was dealing with precious cargo, after all. Another thing I will say, with complete honesty, is that while I write about technology all day every day, handling it is not my personal forte. So the fact that I was able to get this machine out of the box and set up with relatively few hiccups means that anyone can. The provided instructions were easy to follow, and if I needed more information, I just checked out the Ultimaker Resources.


The S5 came with a test print and a box of hardware accessories and tools, including two print cores, several nozzle covers, the glass build plate, a 2 mm Hex screwdriver, a glue stick, spool holder with a material guide, XY calibration sheets, a power cable, and a USB drive. The 3D printer also came with Tough PLA and PVA support material, the latter of which I am in love with…but more on that later.

Keeping my cats and dogs away!

I found it fairly straightforward to set up most of the hardware, but I had a bit of trouble using the clips to secure the Bowden tubes; however, I think that was more user error than anything else. I had no issues installing the Cura software, or updating the firmware once the 3D printer was fully up and running, though it took me a couple of tries to get the 3D printer to connect to my WiFi. While there were no problems loading the materials, I had a harder time installing the BB 0.4 print core. I think this was mainly due to the fact that I was so insanely aware of just how expensive this machine was and was treating it with kid gloves, and a firmer hand is sometimes required when installing hardware. Luckily, the more I used the 3D printer, the more comfortable I became.

Speaking of actually using the 3D printer, when the time finally came to test it out, I got a little too excited and forgot about a very important step: calibration. I very quickly realized that there was a problem, as the print was stringing and not adhering to the build plate, even though I’d applied a thin layer of glue, and stopped the job about three minutes in. While I was sad that my first print was far from a resounding success, I resolved to make it right.

I again waited a bit to try calibrating the S5, partly because I was busy but mainly because I was intimidated by it all over again. But once I took the time to sit down and figure it out, the calibration sheet that came with the 3D printer was a breeze to use, and I was on my way once again, ready to try 3D printing something that wasn’t just the calibration grid of straight lines.

My first successful attempt was one of the two sample prints that came on the included USB drive, which printed very quickly. I love the intuitive touchscreen on the front of the S5 – it’s very user-friendly, and I quickly figured out how to pull up a rough image of what the print would look like once it was complete, so I’d know that it was printing correctly. Once I pried the tiny print off of the plate (a very easy task thanks to a layer of glue underneath), I put it in a small container of water and let it sit overnight, so I could see how long it took to dissolve the PVA support structures.

I loved the Ultimaker water soluble PVA. It was just so easy – pop the print in water and let the material work its magic. It’s possible to simply crunch and pull the supports off by hand as well, but the immediate effect wasn’t as clean. Obviously, the larger and more complicated the prints were, the longer I had to let them sit in water, and I learned that unless I felt like getting gummy residue stuck to my fingers, it was best to just wait until the supports had 100% completely dissolved. It was also a little tough cleaning the build plate, as the PVA sort of bonded with the glue and became hard to scrub off. But I followed the advice of the Dynamism team and got a soft, non-abrasive sponge to help with this task.



My next two prints were included Cura files: a star trophy and a rocket ship. Both of these were fairly straightforward prints, and gave me a chance to try out an extra form of bed adhesion with the addition of a brim; I can tell you now I much prefer a skirt, but I figured I would just give it a shot.

The first print I completed that wasn’t already included in Cura or the USB drive was a Harry Potter Logo by Cults3D user 3DNaow, which turned out great. It’s definitely my favorite 3D print from this review, mostly because I love Harry Potter. Because I majorly scaled it down, the print took a lot less time to complete as well.

I’m going to take a moment here to rave about the remote monitoring. I didn’t download the app, but I did not have the S5 set up in my office. I live in an older Cape Cod house, and my office is in the half story upstairs, which doesn’t have great ventilation. So I decided it would be better to put the 3D printer on a table in my dining room, which is in a much more open part of the house. But this meant that I couldn’t keep my eye on it during the day. Having the option to monitor my print jobs from upstairs, thanks to Cura and the camera located above the auto-leveling bed, provided me with peace of mind.

I would have called this adorable Low Poly T-rex by Thingiverse user slavikk my favorite, had I not screwed it up so badly. I had been messing around in the custom settings in Cura, just to try and put the system through its paces by changing up things like the infill and layer height, and I somehow managed to change the support material from Extruder 2 – the Natural PVA – to Extruder 1 – the Tough PLA. It took me about a quarter of the way into the print to realize my mistake, and by then it was too late. So this dino is still pretty cute, but I think he will be much better-looking when I take the time to get an X-Acto knife and cut away the black supports from the front.

In completing my small collection of low poly animals from Thingiverse, I chose to 3D print a Low Poly Cat – another print by slavikk – and a Low Poly Stanford Bunny by johnny6. I put both the cat and the bunny on the build plate at the same time for a 7.5 hour print. This is where things started to get a little rocky.



About four hours in, an error message popped up on the touchscreen: “One material appears to be empty. Please change it to a new material to continue printing.” I wasn’t home (this became the only time I left the house during a print job) and my husband texted me about it, but said that it didn’t appear that the filament was empty. Once I got home and took a look, it was definitely very obvious that neither filament was empty, so I just took a shot in the dark and pressed ‘Ok’ below the error message to confirm that I had changed to a new material, even though I hadn’t, just to see if it would start up again.

I got lucky and the prints resumed…for about 20 minutes. Then, the same thing happened again, I tried the same fix, and things continued on, though the support material was looking pretty stringy. About an hour later, the connection went out and I lost the monitor view upstairs, but the S5 just kept rolling along.



My next print was an STL file that the Dynamism team had sent me of a generic sample spare part, which took about 15 hours to print, with no supports, when scaled to 100%. It was a good illustration of just how important professional 3D printers, like the S5, can be for businesses in need of prototypes or models. The level of quality and accuracy of the prints produced on the S5 is just stellar, in my opinion. Maybe you should take my opinion with a grain of salt, because as I noted earlier, I’m not an expert on using 3D printers, but that’s up to you.

Realizing that not a single one of the items I’d 3D printed so far were at all useful, I  went back to Thingiverse and found this batman earphones holder by itlaor, which quickly printed without any supports and is now being used by my husband, with great appreciation, to keep his earbuds from getting tangled up all the time.

I also decided to 3D print this very detailed Eagle Sculpture by Thingiverse user 3DWP for my husband, who is an Eagle Scout and has a small collection of eagle figurines and sculptures. With this one, I couldn’t get my computer upstairs to connect to the 3D printer downstairs. I turned the WiFi off on both the computer and the printer and then immediately back on, and still nothing. So in the interest of saving time, I simply saved the STL file to the USB drive and printed it that way. About 10 hours in to the 16.5 hour print, I got the same error message I’d received with the low poly animals, and “fixed” it the same way. It seemed to only occur on prints with PVA supports for some reason.

I enjoyed trying out the Ultimaker S5 3D printer from Dynamism. I had it for far longer than I planned, but thoroughly enjoyed using it. What I knew already from writing about this technology daily, and have now had the chance to truly experience for myself, is that 3D printing takes time, which is something I don’t always have in the evenings – I do a decent amount of church and theatre volunteer work. So I kept searching for quick print jobs to try with the S5 because I just do not often have 15-24 hours where I am at my house the entire time. But as for the quality and ease of use – that was top notch.

The Ultimaker S5 is available for purchase on the Dynamism website starting at $5,995.

Discuss this and other 3D printing topics at 3DPrintBoard.com or share your thoughts below.

[Images taken by Sarah Saunders for 3DPrint.com]

Medical 3D Printing Companies Gain FDA Certification Under Materialise Program

If you follow 3D printing or medical news at all, you’re likely familiar with the many ways that 3D printing is changing medicine for the better. 3D printed anatomical models are helping surgeons better plan and execute surgeries, while 3D printed implants are being customized to patients for better comfort and longevity, just to name a couple of the major advancements of 3D printing in healthcare. While it may seem like things are happening quickly, however, the solutions don’t just appear and magically change the world; there are hurdles that must be addressed before these solutions can be truly widespread, particularly the dreaded R word – regulation.

In March, Materialise became the first company to receive FDA clearance for diagnostic use of its 3D printed anatomical model software. The company then launched an FDA-approved certification program that allows 3D printer manufacturers to have their products tested and validated for use with Materialise’s Mimics inPrint software, which converts medical images into 3D print-ready files.

The certification process is based on the expertise that Materialise has developed – and the company certainly has expertise, as one of the foremost medical 3D printing companies in the world.

“It’s reproducibility testing and geometric accuracy testing, ensuring that the file coming into the printer will be accurately manufactured,” explained Todd Pietila, Global Business Development Manager for Hospital 3D Printing at Materialise.

Ultimaker S5

At the recent 2018 RSNA annual meeting, Materialise announced the two 3D printing companies that most recently had their products certified: Stratasys and Ultimaker. Stratasys’s J750/J735, Object30 Prime and Connex 2 500 3D printers are now on Materialise’s list of 3D printers that are suitable for orthopedic, cranio-maxillofacial and cardiovascular anatomical models, as is Ultimaker’s S5 3D printer along with several materials. These join the Formlabs Form 2 3D printer on the certification list.

The FDA does not have oversight when it comes to the practice of medicine, but if a hospital or clinic is marketing its 3D printing services, it must use FDA-cleared products.

“Other than just the peace of mind of using a cleared solution, it gives a higher level of trust and makes the decision-making much simpler when hospitals are starting 3D printing,” Pietila said. “They don’t have to go out and talk to three or four different vendors, buy separate components, try to piece them together, make sure they all work together. It’s a pre-vetted system of software, hardware and materials. And it just the reduces the overhead and burden for them.”

According to Michael Gaisford, Director of Healthcare Solutions at Stratays, the certification process is a big step forward for 3D printing in healthcare. Facilities will now have easier access to solutions that will allow them to perform faster, less invasive procedures, lowering costs and offering better care for patients.

“You want to be ahead of the curve when it comes to the FDA,” Gaisford said. “The hospitals want to see this as well because they’re making some pretty critical decisions when it comes to patient care…Those who are involved in the space are already asking for it.”

Discuss this and other 3D printing topics at 3DPrintBoard.com or share your thoughts below. 

 

3D Printing Presentations, Exhibits, Networking, and More at Additive Manufacturing Strategies in Boston

Last winter, experts in the fields of 3D printing, medicine, and dentistry gathered together to attend the first annual Additive Manufacturing Strategies Summit, titled “The Future of 3D Printing in Medicine and Dentistry.” The increasing amount of 3D printing applications in the medical and dental fields were covered during the event, which was so successful that 3DPrint.com and SmarTech Markets Publishing, the industry’s leading provider of market research reports and industry analysis, are co-hosting a second AMS summit this January.

First things first: the 2019 AMS event, “The Future of 3D Printing in Medicine and Dentistry,” will be held in Boston, Massachusetts from January 29-31 at the Hynes Convention Center. In addition to general medical and dental applications for 3D printing, additional topics that will be covered at the show include prosthetics and wearables, 3D bioprinting, IP and legal, materials science, and venture capital and investing. This year, Ultimaker is going to be sponsoring the event.

The 2018 event saw attendees from 10 countries and 30 different states, and I’d say we’re on track to do even better this second time around. In addition to a startup competition with a $15,000 cash investment from Asimov Ventures at stake, an exhibit floor, and two pre-conference workshops, over 30 speakers who are experts in academic, commercial, government, and practitioner organizations will be presenting at this peer-driven event.

Just some of the many speakers who will be featured at this year’s AMS summit include:

  • Carolyn DeVasto, Global Vice President of Communications, BIOMODEX
  • Scott Dunham, SmarTech’s Vice President of Research
  • Maria Esquala, a leader and volunteer with e-NABLE
  • Michael Gaisford, Director of Medical Solutions, Stratasys
  • Laura Gilmour, Global Medical Business Development Manager, EOS
  • Greg Kowalczyk with Additive Orthopaedics
  • Alyssa Glennon, Materialise Principal Engineer
  • Rik Jacobs, Vice President and General Manager of Dental Solutions, 3D Systems

AMS will feature two separate tracks – one for medical and a separate one for dental – and is meant for business attendees who are or will be using 3D printing in their enterprises.

At this year’s event, attendees should expect to get more clarity on how intellectual property (IP) will impact the development of 3D printing, as well as gain insight on the potential 3D printing has for revenue in the medial and dentistry industries, as SmarTech analysts will be presenting several sessions complete with current forecasts of revenue generation and penetration. The event will also teach attendees how 3D printing is transforming procedures, and disrupting the traditional supply chains, at doctor and dental offices, hospitals, and labs.

Attendees will learn what specific markets that 3D bioprinting firms will be making money in, along with the products that will likely succeed for many years to come. In addition, sessions at the event will provide attendees with a better understanding of the many regulatory requirements that affect 3D printing in the medical and dental fields.

Exhibitors include TRUMPF, Structo, and Arfona, among others, and attendees will have several valuable opportunities to network with these exhibitors, along with other people attending the event, during meals, coffee breaks, and at the cocktail hour that will be held in the exhibit hall before the Startup Showdown at 6:15 pm on January 30th.

Various levels of registration for this can’t-miss event are still ongoing, and if you register for the 2019 AMS summit by December 13th, you can save 35%.

Discuss this event and other 3D printing topics at 3DPrintBoard.com or share your thoughts below.

Materialise greenlights Ultimaker S5 for medical 3D printing

Dutch 3D printer manufacturer, Ultimaker, has announced that the Ultimaker S5 FDM/FFF printer has received Materialise certification. Materialise tested the compatibility of the Ultimaker S5 for FDA approved medical applications using the Materialise Mimics inPrint software.  John Kawola, President of Ultimaker, North America, said, “The Materialise certification of the 3D printing workflow when used with Mimics […]

New 3D Printing Safety Enclosure and Filtration System Designed for Ultimaker 3D Printers and XSTRAND

The Ultimate 3D Printing Store (U3DPS), based in Florida, was one of the first resellers in the US to carry engineering-grade XSTRAND 3D printing filament by Owens Corning. This exclusive material is part of the Ultimaker ecosystem, as it can now be used with the Ultimaker S5 thanks to the CC Red 0.6 print core, which Ultimaker just released on Tuesday. But more good news has just been announced for these three, in the form of a single, powerful solution for industrial 3D printing.

“We are thrilled to announce that our exclusive 3Domus Filtration System (3DFS), which we designed specifically for the Ultimaker S5, will be available the same day,” said Roy Kirchner, Founder and President of the Ultimate 3D Printing Store.

The combination of the Ultimaker S5, XSTRAND filament, and the 3DFS safety enclosure is sure to have many industrial users reaching for their wallets. 3DFS is actually the first safety enclosure designed specifically for use with XSTRAND filaments and Ultimaker 3D printers.

“Ultimaker is rightly regarded as making the world’s best FFF 3D printers. And Owens Corning has created a filament that will revolutionize 3D additive manufacturing. Now, our company is debuting the first, and only, safety enclosure for the Ultimaker S5, which we believe not only completes this luxury machine but allows XSTRAND to print to its fullest capacity,” said Kirchner.

The enclosure, with U3DPS says is the first of its kind, was designed so Ultimaker S5 users could 3D print with more exotic filaments, such as XSTRAND, without contaminating their work space or damaging the machine.

The 3DFS safety enclosure, which Kirchner says is also compatible with the Ultimaker 3, Ultimaker 3 Extended, Ultimaker 2+, and Ultimaker 2 Extended 3D printers, comes pre-assembled, so you can take it out of the box and put it right to work. The enclosure comes with an optional activated carbon and HEPA filtration system, and offers “maximum protection” with no screws necessary to attach it to the 3D printer.

Safety and protection during 3D printing is a big deal. When 3D printers are used in places where a lot of people are around, like business and schools, there’s always a danger of inhaling small particles and potentially dangerous fumes. Last month, 3DPrint.com spoke with the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), which is the part of the US government that researches the safety of workers in many different professions.

“If a risk cannot be eliminated, engineering controls such as a fume hood or local exhaust ventilation (a system that specifically ventilates the printer rather than the air in a room) with HEPA/carbon filtration would be the next preferred method to reduce emission levels.  Some 3-D printers are now being sold with built-in filtration units,” the group of NIOSH researchers told us last month when asked how people should best protect themselves from potential 3D printing risks.

In one workplace, NIOSH researchers showed that an appropriately designed and operated local exhaust ventilation with HEPA/carbon filtration reduced the amounts of particles and chemicals in air.”

According to Kirchner, U3DPS was inspired to develop a safety-conscious and attractive add-on unit because none of the 3D printers by Ultimaker currently come with their own factory-built enclosures.

Kirchner explained, “Anyone who works with one of these high-end printers, especially in an enclosed environment, should have this enclosure, not only to protect their machine from outside contaminants and to maintain internal thermal management, but also to keep their work environment free of fumes during the printing process.

“Our clear enclosure fits over your Ultimaker printer like a glove, forming a seal, while still allowing full view of the printing process.”

The company’s new Ultimaker safety enclosure can be purchased with or without the activated carbon and HEPA filtration system. Each 33DFS unit comes pre-drilled, so it can easily attached to an Ultimaker 3D printer. But in addition to offering us a safer way to use our 3D printers, the best news is that the safety enclosure is relatively affordable…maybe not for someone like me, who hates spending large amounts of money on fancy equipment (thus, why I do not own a 3D printer), but for those who spend a lot of time 3D printing, it’s worth the cost.

The enclosure can be purchased without the filtration system for a price between $179 and $379, while including the 3DFS with the enclosure will cost, depending on the 3D printer, anywhere from $299 (Ultimaker 2+) to $499 (Ultimaker S5). Additionally, you can also purchase the activated carbon and HEPA filtration system separately for just $129; replacement filters are only $29 each. But if you’re interested, you’d better act fast – the company expects that the limited quantity of enclosures currently available for purchase in its initial production run will sell out fast. Visit the Ultimate 3D Printing Store website to purchase yours today.

Discuss this and other 3D printing topics at 3DPrintBoard.com or share your thoughts in the comments below. 

[Images provided by The Ultimate 3D Printing Store]

3MF 3D printing file format adopted by Autodesk, HP, Microsoft, Siemens, and 13 others

The 3D Manufacturing Format (3MF), a Joint Development Foundation project established to develop an advanced 3D printing file format, has announced that 17 companies have adopted its 3MF platform to create 32 products. “Wide adoption of 3MF is occurring because 3MF is a modern 3D printing file format designed with manufacturing in mind. For additive […]

3D printing news Sliced: 3D Systems, Optomec, Luxexcel, Local Motors

Today in Sliced, our regular 3D printing news digest, we feature new 3D printing university courses, fiber-reinforced filament, cutting edge additive manufacturing research, the future of 3D printed electronics and an autonomous vehicle challenge. Read on for the latest news form 3D Systems, the University of Plymouth, Becton, Dickinson and Company, Optomec, Luxexcel, Local Motors and more. […]

3D Printers Open New Opportunities for Co-Working Space

In New York’s Brooklyn Navy Yard is a community of more than 100 companies, co-located in an area of over 84,000 square feet. This cluster is called New Lab, and it is home to designers, entrepreneurs, engineers and others working to develop new manufacturing technology through robotics, IoT, 3D printing, blockchain and more. The facility used to be a factory that built battleships, and it has been repurposed in an ingenious way, with several member-access fabrication shops giving member companies space to prototype, design and iterate. One of these member companies is 3D printer manufacturer Ultimaker.

“When Ultimaker joined New Lab as a member company, we brought with us a fleet of our latest-model professional desktop 3D printers and hundreds of spools of free filament that we made available for members to use with full 24-hour access at no charge for the first year and a half,” said Matt Griffin, Ultimaker’s Director of Community for North America.

After Ultimaker arrived with its 3D printers, New Lab was able to eliminate some higher-cost, higher-maintenance industrial FFF 3D printers, boosting their fabrication capability and capacity.

“For the members who might be interested in 3D printing, and in integrating 3D printing into their workflow, the largest barrier was that they either assumed that 3D printing could do anything, or that it couldn’t do the thing they needed it to,” said Alexander Susse, New Lab’s Director of Additive Manufacturing. “The way to get people to truly understand the usefulness of 3D printing is to just give them the tools and let them start trying to print things. You can’t really do that with some of the more industrial options.”

New Lab’s 3D Printing Lab currently has 12 Ultimaker 3D printers, available to be reserved for use at any time of the day or night. According to 10xBETA CEO Marcel Botha, it’s more useful to have numerous desktop 3D printers than one industrial printer – and it costs about the same.

Marcel Botha

“With our Ultimakers, we can finally use 3D printers for experimentation on the fly,” said Botha. “The original aim of iterating and rapid prototyping is, at the end of the day, to prototype – not to produce costly artifacts at each stage. When I print using SLS or high-end FFF solutions, I feel the parts that cost so much to produce are precious – but the only requirement for the printed parts is that they are something my team and I can look at for five minutes and then throw away. We’d rather buy three more Ultimakers than one $9k entry-level industrial-grade machine.”

Tony Kauffmann, Product Development Engineer at Voltaic Systems, has been able to use the 3D printers to eliminate several of the middle steps that slow down production.

“It definitely speeds things up,” he said. “Timelines overall have shrunk, but I’d say the real advantage for us is that it allows us to improve the quality of our products.”

Tony Kauffmann

Eric Forman of Eric Forman Studio uses Ultimaker’s 3D printers to complement the other tools he works with.

Eric Forman

“I would say three-quarters of what I print is probably to assist with another tool,” he said. “…And now that I’ve expanded to using the actual 3D-printed parts in the final piece as the material itself, and not just as a helper, it’s a whole different ball of wax.”

Freelance mechanical engineer Arya Tabatabai has learned a lot from using the 3D printers at New Lab. He has discovered the usefulness of creating 3D printed prototypes that look just like the final parts, as he can give them to the industrial designers he works for to get immediate feedback. Of the many tools available at New Lab, he finds the 3D printers to be the most user-friendly.

“The Ultimakers are great tools for prototyping in general,” he said. “I’ve done a lot of research on desktop 3D printers, and from what I can see the Ultimakers are one of the best, if not the best in terms of the FFF category. It’s a strength to my work just using them, being able to think up something, CAD something up, and get it in front of you. Whether it’s in an hour or a day, that speaks for itself as to how beneficial it is.”

After getting so much use out of New Lab’s Ultimaker 3D printers, several member companies have considered getting their own 3D printers or to think about prototyping in new ways. Having 3D printers as a part of a collaborative community like New Lab has sparked a lot of creativity and allowed the member companies to make faster progress than they would have without these valuable tools.

Discuss this and other 3D printing topics at 3DPrintBoard.com or share your thoughts below. 

[Source/Images: Ultimaker]

 

Desktop 3D Printing and Functional Replacement Parts

3D printing is seeing increasing use in the manufacture of components for bikes, and sometimes even the bikes themselves. Bikes with 3D printed parts don’t just look cool, either – they perform just as well as, and sometimes even better than, regular bikes.

Open source advocate and 3D printing educator at Michigan Tech Dr. Joshua Pearce recently published an Ultimaker blog post about how to use your desktop 3D printer to create functional, inexpensive replacement parts for complex machines that require mechanical integrity – like bicycles.

Dr. Pearce’s team partnered up with the research group of John Gershenson. Dr. Pearce, Gershenson, Nagendra Tanikella, and Ben Savonen completed a study on the use of open source 3D printers for making components for the popular Black Mamba bicycle.

Dr. Pearce wrote, “Specifically, we chose to start tests with pedals that fail often and have clear standards namely the CEN (European Committee for Standardization) standards for racing bicycles for 1) static strength, 2) impact, and 3) dynamic durability.”

First, the teams used parametric open source FreeCAD to design a custom CAD model of a replacement pedal; the model and STL files are available for download from Youmagine. The pedal was made using the most common 3D printing material – biodegradable, inexpensive PLA.

Static strength test

The pedal was first subjected to a 1,500 N vertical downward force under the CEN static strength test, which found no fractures. Then, the pedal was tested to a 3,000 N compression load applied pedal uniformly – this is actually twice the required amount, which meant that the pedal well exceeded the standard, and, as Dr. Pearce put it, was able to “clear the first hurdle!”

A mass of 15 kg was dropped onto the pedal from 400 mm up, 60 mm from the mounting face, for the CEN bicycle pedal impact resistance test. While the test resulted in a minor dent, there weren’t any fractures – another test passed.

In order to simulate a real-world bicycle, with a person on the pedals, the CEN developed its dynamic durability test for bike pedals. For this test, the research groups had to spin the spindle at 100 rev/min for 100,000 revolutions; at the same time, the pedal also had a mass of 65 kg suspended only by a string. Just like with the static strength test, the pedal’s dynamic durability was designed to exceed the CEN standard under normal conditions.

Impact resistance

Rather than using a rig, the team attached the 3D printed pedal to a bicycle for direct testing, and went 200,000 revolutions with a person’s 75 kg weight being carried solely by the pedals. Again, this was twice the CEN standard, and passed again – I’m sensing a theme here.

Dr. Pearce wrote, “Our humble 3D printed pedal is now good enough for European [racing] bikes…but wait it is actually better!”

The 3D printed pedals are nearly a third of the moss of the Black Mamba stock pedals, which is performance-enhancing as well as cost-effective…if raw PLA pellets or recycled materials, like ABS, nylon, or PET, are used, that is.

Dr. Pearce also provided some easy, DIY guidelines to achieve lab-worthy results for the 3D printed pedals, so you won’t have to redo any bike part experiments.

First, look into expertise already available through a study that researched the parts you were interested in, such as this one regarding the viability of distributed manufacturing of 3D printed PLA bike pedals. Then, determine the material’s mechanical requirements – check out this study for a handy open access list of most of the commonly available tensile strengths of the more common 3D printing materials.

Sub-optimal layers

Print the component in the right material, and with required infills, to achieve your application’s desired mechanical properties. Then, make sure to check out the print’s exterior for any sub-optimal layers from under-extrusion – if the part is under-extruded, fix your 3D printer and try it again.

Finally, weigh the part to make sure there isn’t any under-extrusion inside that you’re not able to see; Dr. Pearce explained that a digital food scale has “acceptable precision and accuracy” for most prints done on extrusion-based 3D printers.

“This mass is compared to the theoretical value using the densities from this table for the material and the volume of the object,” Dr. Pearce said.

The previously mentioned study with the list of tensile strengths was able to find a linear relationship between a 3D printed part’s ideal mass and the maximum stress able to be undertaken by samples. You can just check the study to see how far off from the ideal your part is, and then determine if it needs to be reprinted before figuring out the high probability of your needed properties.

According to mechanical studies completed on many extrusion 3D printers, open source machines produce stronger prints than proprietary systems, mostly thanks to the setting limitations of the latter.

“But be aware that there is a range and the properties of your parts will depend a lot on your machine and the settings you use,” Dr. Pearce warns. “In general printing at the high end of the extruder temperature range for your material will result in a higher strength.”

Just use that weighing technique, and compare your part’s mass to the ideal, to find out where it will most likely lie on the strength range.

You can read Dr. Pearce’s full rundown at Ultimaker.

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