Nicholas Oborny
In a previous post, I introduced a TI Design reference design for the 3-D printer controller board TIDA-00405 shown in Figure 1 and gave a brief rundown of some of the key TI devices enabling 3-D printers. Today, I’ll provide more background about 3-D printing in general. This might be old hat to those who are well-versed in 3-D printers, but may turn on a few light bulbs for those new to working with this device.
The first concept to grasp is that 3-D printing comes in many different forms. The all-encompassing term “3-D printing” happens to cover a wide variety of methods. The common thread is that these methods are all “additive manufacturing” techniques. Material is combined together to create an object as opposed to being removed (such as in computer numerical control [CNC] milling or laser cutting). Two of the more prevalent 3-D printing methods are:
No matter which 3D printing method you use, the first step is to interpret the 3-D object. It all starts with a 3-D model, which is a digital representation of a physical object and can be created or obtained in a variety of methods, including:
My next post will discuss how a typical FDM 3-D printer turns the 3-D model into something real. If you have any suggestions on what you’d like to see me cover in this series, please log in to post in this blog’s comments section below.
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