In most people's impression, the fdm3d printing process mostly creates layers by depositing molten materials (usually in the form of plastic wires), which is a classic printing mode. However, recently, a new method based on the FDM principle is emerging, which changes the raw material of printing from wire to plastic particles or other granular materials, which is particle 3D printing. As a pioneer in the development and manufacturing of particle 3D printers, piocrat has successfully launched pellet 3D printing devices such as G5, G12 and G40.

Granular 3D printing is a new 3D printing method, which manufactures parts layer by layer by using thermoplastic in granular form. More and more companies are developing machines using this type of material, and even those standard 3D printers can design corresponding solutions to be compatible with granular materials.


Plastic particles are granular materials obtained by so-called granulation. In this process, these materials can be chemical synthetic products, plastics, composite materials or minerals, which are molded into granular compressed materials. These types of resources are mainly used for injection molding. Although, as we mentioned, they have become more and more important in the field of 3D printing, it has been proved that compared with the current popular wire shaft feeding mode, the frequency of particle feeding in additive manufacturing is still somewhat low. The two feeding modes seem contradictory because the filaments are also made of particles, but the direct use of particles in printing will save an entire intermediate step in the whole process.


Granular raw materials and 3D printing
One thing to remember is that particles and filaments need different extruders to meet your printing needs. Compared with filaments, the pellet extruder has an integral silo, which gradually absorbs the material and pushes it into the melting zone. There, the particles are softened to the desired concentration, after which the plastic is ejected through the nozzle and deposited on the printing platform. Although this process may seem a bit complicated compared to filament extrusion, it has many really interesting benefits, which we will see below.

As for the main advantages of particle 3D printing, we found that the final cost of parts was significantly reduced due to low material cost and short manufacturing time. In this way, we can obtain an ideal technology for producing long series or large parts, otherwise we will not be able to fully profit. Another positive idea is to reduce the jam in the manufacturing process, because this is a common printing problem when working with filaments. Finally, additive manufacturing using particles makes it possible to create multicolor parts by combining plastic particles of different colors in the same tray.


But when using particles, what is particularly interesting is the final properties that can be obtained. When using filaments, it must be known that their physical and chemical properties are not exactly the same as the raw materials. In fact, when we manufacture filaments, we need to heat the raw materials, which in turn reduces their properties. The more we heat it, the more obvious its degradation. Then, we have to add additives to reduce this degradation. Therefore, the results obtained are very different from the initial materials. However, by using particles from the beginning, these transformations are not required, enabling the user to bypass these degradation and get closer to the chemical and physical properties of the plastics used for injection molding. In terms of disadvantages, it is worth mentioning that at present, granular 3D printing is not as popular as filament, so it may be difficult to develop an extruder suitable for these materials. In addition, when creating components layer by layer, the particles are not interconnected like filaments, but are dispersed. This makes it difficult to control changes in the flow rate that are necessary for more complex components. However, these problems are not serious for piocrat's G series models. The biggest problem at present is that the accuracy may not be as high as that of FDM.

Particles allow for reduced cost and manufacturing time

As we can see, the increasing popularity of granular 3D printing is encouraging more and more companies to develop their own manufacturing solutions. Does this new trend mean the end of wire 3D printing mode? What new players in the additive manufacturing industry will bet on this technology? Only the future can give the answer.