Frequently asked questions

3D Printing

Which resin should you 3D print with?

Material advances for 3d printing technologies occur all the time, let us guide you with the latest materials as well as the latest techniques (combining 3d printing with other forms of manufacturing) to get the best result for your project. Standard Resins

  • Clear: Transparency, polishes to near optical clarity, great for internal channels and working with light.
  • White: Neutral and matte tone, slight translucency when thin. Works well for sanding, and provides a great base color for painting prints.
  • Grey: Neutral and matte tone, great for showing off surface finish and for printing small, accurate features, photographs easily.
  • Black: Highly pigmented, our most opaque, high detail resin. Matte surfaces, great for printing small, intricate features.
Using Tough Resin Tough Resin simulates the feel and many of the important mechanical properties of ABS plastic.
  • ABS (Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene) is a very common thermoplastic that provides a good balance of strength and flexibility. Tough Resin creates strong engineering prototypes and has been developed to withstand high stress and strain. Consider using this material for works-like prototypes and assemblies, including designs with snap fit joints and living hinges. For further finishing, Tough resin can also be machined once printed. Tough Resin can be printed at 50 and 100 micron layer heights.
  • Toughness refers to a material’s ability to absorb energy before fracturing. When a tough material yields, it will undergo some deformation rather than just shattering. In other words, tough materials have a little more “give” than brittle ones.
  • Toughness is also defined as the area under a stress-strain curve. Tough materials generally have a good balance of strength (the amount of stress a material can withstand) and ductility (the elongation or percentage strain). Because of this, the area under a tough material’s stress-strain curve is much larger than that of a very strong material with low elongation. This has a direct correlation to the amount of energy each material can absorb before failure. Tough Resin has lower stiffness than the Standard Resins while withstanding more elongation.
Recommended for
  • High-stress components
  • Snap-fit functions and living hinges
  • Machining
  • Cyclic loading
  • Works-like/feels like ABS prototyping
  • Geometrically accurate prototyping under load
Not recommended for
  • Very fine features or thin walls
  • Rigid or stiff prints
  • High-temperature applications



Can you 3D print flexible Resin?

Flexible Resin is an elastomer that allows for bendable/compressible parts A Flexible watch band printed in its final shape. Recommended for

  • Cushioning and dampening
  • Functional prototypes
  • Ergonomic prototyping: handles, grips
  • Simulating soft-touch materials
  • Adding soft overmolds to multi-material assemblies
  • Packaging
  • Stamps
Not recommended for
  • Simulating very high elongation materials (rubber band)
  • Very fine features or thin walls



3D Scanning

What dimensional accuracy can the 3D scanners achieve?

We can 3D scan your items by using 3 different 3D scanning technology 1 - Fringe projection 3d scanner* (Structured light). from +/- 0.015mm up to +/- 0.1mm 2 - 3D arm (probing) +/- 0.025mm up to +/- 0.1 3 - 3D laser arm +/- 0.025mm up to +/- 0.1mm * Min. distance point-to-point: 0.018mm



Why can't I just set the aperture to the widest setting (lowest f-number) possible, and just adjust the exposure in the software?

Changing the aperture also affects the focus depth of field. The wider the aperture is, the narrower the depth of field will be. You need to consider this when choosing an object to scan. If the object is too long (either towards or away from the camera), not all of it may be in focus and it will be blurry in the images. This will reduce the mesh quality and add undesirable results.



In which CAD format can I get the data?

We normally save the data uasing these CAD formats: Parasolid, STEP, IGES, Solidworks (.prt), Rhinoceros (3dm), VDA