Speed - 3D Printing: The Basics and Beyond - page 68

Metal printers have also increased speed over the years. Directed Energy Deposition print-
ers are estimated to have become 15 times faster between 2009 and 2014 [xxxv] . The increase
in speed has been accomplished in large part by using stronger lasers.

Print speed is not the whole picture though. FDM leader Stratasys has published a white
paper which urges people to consider the whole production process and include pre- and
post-processing such as machine preparation, cleaning, curing, cooling down, de-powder,
remove supports etc. Stratasys claims that if you consider the whole picture, FDM might
not be the slowest 3D printing technology after all. In the case of plastic injection molding
the production phase speed is superior to 3D printing, but it might take weeks to make a
mold. In case you are making a prototype, 3D printing might be faster than injection mold-
ing.

Is it possible for 3D printing to break through the speed barrier and truly become a man-
ufacturing technology? Research says that this is probably just around the corner. Scient-
ists at the Loughborough University (LU) in the UK have developed a 3D printing pro-
cess called High Speed Sintering (HSS) [xxxvi] , which they have patented. HSS utilizes inkjet
print heads (from the listed company XAAR) and infrared heating to sinter whole layers
of plastic powders. In 2014 the HSS layer cycle took 18 seconds. If each layer is 0.1 mm,
it would take 84 minutes to print a 28 mm high object, which is comparative to the fastest
of the current commercial systems. However, the researchers at the University of Lough-

[xxxvii]

borough are hopeful that they can cut down the cycle time to five seconds , less than a

third of the current time usage.

US Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory teamed up with a private com-
pany, Cincinnati Incorporated, in 2014 in an attempt to construct a 3D printer which would
be 200-500 times faster than other machines on the market. The printer would print in

[xxxviii]

plastics and have a build size of over a cubic meter .

A team of researchers with Chinese background at the University of Southern California's
Viterbi School of Engineering has developed a mask imaged projection-based stereolitho-
graphy (MIP-SL) process which builds layers in seconds and is also multi-material enabled.
The process uses a two-way projection method which builds the object from two ends.

Improving 3D printing speed is possible to a certain extent, and a lot of the improvement
is still in the future. Although the speed might never surpass traditional manufacturing it