3D printing is probably more widely known to the general public than CNC machining is. CNC machining has been around longer, since 1952, while the first 3D printer was designed in 1981. 3D printers come in all kinds of different shapes, sizes, and even types. They are helpful machines and now are user friendly.
3d printing is commonplace now in design studios, manufacturing, and fabrication. It’s a fantastic tool to move quickly through ideas and bring them into the physical world to play with and discuss. The technology has really come down in price and now many people are finding the benefit of having them in your home. You can take an idea from your brain, and put it into the real world. It’s thoughts, to pixels, to atoms, and back to pixels again. Objects can easily be reverse engineered and customized or iterated on with the use of 3d scanners that also have come down in price.
3d printing is easy to start doing because it doesnt take much thought to make 3d printed objects. If you start with PLA filament on a FDM printer, all you need to do it put together the printer and load the filament and press go. There are some small things you have to learn like leveling the bed, but even that task has become automated on the newer printers.
3d printing can beat out using the CNC because you dont have to program the tool pathing. The slicer will generate the 3d print from your model almost automatically. It’s not entirely automated because you have to still setup the settings such as layer height, infill percentage and pattern, support strategy, temperature and flow rate for your extruder, but most of these settings can be set and forget.
CNC programming takes a lot more forethought. You have to figure out how to hold your stock, what tooling you’ll use, what toolpath strategy, and in general cutting is more aggressive and scary and there are a lot more physical variables at play.
You also have to deal with the waste that is produced by subtractive manufacturing. 3d printing is additive in nature so it inherently doesn’t waste any material, besides any supports that may be necessary to hold up areas that overhang.
3d printing is also less hands on. With CNC machining, you usually have to watch to make sure a part isnt going to fail and wreck your machine. 3d printing, depending on who you talk to, is something you can start, and walk away from. If you are being conservative in your settings, this is almost certainly the case. 3d printing takes a long time, but it’s worry free and easy to start.
3d printing shines on doing things that are super detailed, organic or sculptural in nature. With CNC machines your detail will only be as good as your diversity of tool selection, which raises the execution exponentially. Each tool has it’s own set of parameters that need to be programmed to cut the part successfully. Not to mention the upkeep and dissemination to operators downstream, starts to get to be a headache.
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