Other Materials
Polyjet:
Digital ABS
Digital ABS simulates the mechanical and thermal properties of ABS. While FDM printed ABS has a rough surface and limited accuracy, digital ABS is printed in high-resolution, high-accuracy and with smooth surfaces. It is the strongest photopolymer we offer and is suitable for highly sophisticated functional prototypes.
Overview
Technology
Polyjet
Colors
White
Max. size
342 x 342 x 200 mm
Cost
$$$
(High)
Lead Time
2 – 5 business days
Accuracy
± 0,15% with a lower limit of 0,2 mm
Material-Details
Click on the topics of your interest.
Functional prototypes
While Digital ABS is more expensive than laser sintering, it outperforms it in terms of resolution and accuracy. The material has high mechanic strength and can be heat treated, to achieve heat resistance to up to 85°C.
Furthermore, the surface is of a very quality compared to most other additive technologies and can be smoothed to an extend that it can be coated, which is challenging with laser sinter parts.
Approximate price
- Pricing for Polyjet is complex, for Digital ABS please request a manual quote.
Pricing factors
- Material changes: When changing a material on the machine, a significant amount of material is discarded by cleaning the print heads and pipes. Digital ABS consists of two materials, which are dynamically mixed while printing, therefore Digital ABS always requires two material changes.
- Material consumption: Polyjet is the 3D printing technology with the largest material cost among all plastics. Furthermore, for technological reasons, more material is used than the part requires, sometimes the material consumption is up to 8 times higher than the final part requires (e.g. 800 g material for a 100 g part).
Look & Feel
- The surfaces are smooth, compared to most other 3D printing technologies. However, layer lines can be seen in z-axis, as well as in x-y axis. Only this technology has x-y lines, which are a result from the print head scraping some material from the surface while printing.
- Surfaces without support material are glossy, surfaces with support material are rougher and somewhat dull.
- The material is white, however, when printed thin (~ <= 1 mm), it is translucent.
Characteristics
- Strongest photopolymer we offer, high mechanic strength.
- When thin (<= 1 mm), the material is extremely flexible.
Tensile
Strength
55-60 MPa
Elongation
at break
25 – 40 %
Modulus
of Elasticity
2.600 – 3.000 MPa
Flexural
Strength
65-75 MPa
Vicat A
58 – 68 °C
Shore
hardness
85 – 87D
Wall thickness
The minimum wall thickness should be no less than 0,5 mm. Please note, the material is extremely flexible in thin structures. Thin parts won’t break, but are not rigid. For rigid structures, allow at least 1.5 mm wall thickness.
Cavities
Cavities can be realized as long as there is a min. 10 mm diameter escape hole to remove excess material. The support is a waxy material which needs to be scraped of. If the escape hole is too small, we cannot access the cavity and support material will remain inside the cavity. Accordingly, for larger cavities, leave larger escape holes.
Clearance Gap
In case your file contains several shells, make sure to keep a clearance gap of min. 0,5 mm between the shells, otherwise they could be fused together.
Resolution
The minimal details size should not be smaller than 0,5 mm. The detail resolution of the material is a little less than Vero, but outperforms most other rapid prototyping materials.
Interlocking parts
Interlocking parts can be printed as long as there is a clearance gap of at least 0.5 mm and there is sufficient space to remove the support material.
Bounding Box
The maximum size of the part cannot exceed 342 x 342 x 200 mm.
Standard Finishing
- Remove support material
Optional Finishing
- Sanding
- Bead blasting
- Coating
In Polyjet 3D printing a print head is suspended above a build platform. The print head contains several nozzles as well as a UV lamp. During printing, the print head will sweep over the platform, ejecting tiny drops of a light-curing polymer on to the printing platform, and then almost immediately curing it with UV light. The platform then lowers between 16-32 microns (depending on the machine and setting) and the next layer of polymer is applied to the already hardened previous layer. This process continues until the object is completely 3D-printed. Overhanging sections are stabilized during the print by support material, which need to be removed after the print is completed.
Multijet Modeling (aka Polyjet) Printing Process. Quelle: Youtube.com / 3D-Systems