A few years after the release of fdm3d printing technology and digital manufacturing method, people began to discuss the fact that the industry was in trouble, that is, FDM 3D printing was only a hobby and a rapid prototyping method, and it was not suitable for use in factories that produced products in batches. In fact, not necessarily. Now many fdm3d printers are also used for industrial production, only limited to some industries. Because some special industries have requirements for the properties and performance of materials, this industry needs some changes or innovations, which is inevitable. Chuangxiang Santi has been committed to the industrial application of 3D printers, and the recently developed and launched granular 3D printer series G5, G12 and G40 have attracted the attention of the global market. In general, three major problems need to be analyzed and solved if 3D printing technology is to play a role in industrial manufacturing.


The first problem is about the printing volume. When considering printing large objects, the main limitation is the material cost. If more than two rolls of filaments are used in a printing session of a large object, the printing method can be abandoned and replaced by another technology due to cost and printing method, which means that 3D printing has fallen into the consumption culture of inkjet printers. For example, "Brand" makes more money by selling expensive ink cartridges and toner cartridges than by selling actual paper printers.

The second problem is about printing time. Because of the large number of coordinate movements performed by the machine to complete a model, the deposition of this small part of materials and the sum of time make this FDM technology unsuitable for mass production, and can even be considered as using non rapid prototyping methods in some cases. Analyze the possibility of upgrading the print head to use different deposition technologies, The solution is to increase the amount of plastic deposition over time.

The third but not the last problem described here is the linearity of materials, which means that if you only have one roll of white PLA plastic, you can only print white PLA models. If you want to make fragments of another color, or if you want to make models of multiple colors, you must buy the same number of plastic rolls. For companies that release this technology to people for free, this is a good business model, But at the same time, there are huge economic benefits.

Question 1: printing volume and cost
Looking around social media, we can see that most 3D printers can print in a volume of less than 30 x 30 x 30 cm. This is because these small volumes are enough to meet the needs of ordinary consumers, because the system is made in this way. But if the new series of large 3D printers become popular, will the materials be cheaper? The user will automatically switch to printing large projects, and the aesthetics of plastic will increase. Strangely, if you want to make a model that takes up all the volume of your 3D printer, you must pay the price of plastic, and even the main cost of machine costs.

Question 2: speed and productivity
After using the 3D printer for a period of time, ordinary users have some experience in the use of the machine, its materials and all possible ways to obtain high-quality works at the highest possible speed. Sometimes they don't even care about the price of tools or materials. Ordinary DIY 3D printers cooperate with print heads (extruders), place a thin hot wire on the building platform, draw models layer by layer, and use small nozzles in the spirit of quality, Small volume placement can always achieve good results, but when the project becomes larger and a large number of plastics need to be transformed, the number of spools, the time required for completion, and the delicate process of replacing spools one by one.

Question 3: versatility of materials
After this period of time, users who use 3D printing to make prototypes for projects, toys and even artificial hands can easily find empty plastic spools around the workplace, hoping to be rewound. A box of at least 5kg failed prints is saved as a treasure, waiting to be melted and reused, not to mention the Rainbow Series of plastic spools ready to create wonderful works, Everyone who uses a 3D printer wants to have unlimited possibilities of mixing colors and materials, and may need to generate complex material models with special properties to improve mechanical efficiency or high-temperature performance.

Extruder design in order to solve the problems mentioned before we proposed to develop the print head of the particle extruder used with granular plastics, the most valuable improvement of the wire extruder is the low price of plastic per kilogram. This plastic particle can be found in the package of 25kg, and its cost is lower than the price of a roll of ordinary PLA. The industrial method of wire production in Chinese factories starts with this small plastic ball, They add some additives and colorants to change the performance and color of the final product, which creates some uncertainty about what we melt on the machine, what kind of smoke they produce, and what biodegradable grade this material really has. Using a particle extruder on a 3D printer can completely freely use its own colorant to match a specific tone, You can add some well-known additives to improve the performance of the final model, and even mix some carbon fiber fragments or steel powder inside to make it stronger, which is the idea of printing composite materials. There are already very good particle extruders in the market, but the extruder we have to create is somewhat different. It is a mechanism to shorten the printing time. The system works with variable width nozzles instead of using a fixed diameter hole at the output tip. We designed a flat metal cap with a 1x10mm slit. In this slit, we can find a moving part to adjust the output of materials, The initial strategy to make it work faster is the filament extruder. It is about using small openings to make the perimeter of the model. When printing the filler, it will open with the required width, or increase the printing volume and generate layers faster according to the software. The working principle is the same as that of the industrial plastic sheet extruder. The conventional FDM 3D printer extruder is static and has a fixed diameter output nozzle. The particle extruder generates a variable laminate. The laminate has the ability to rotate 360 degrees to adapt the direction of the laminate to the contour of the mold. Details of this process can be found in the [mechanical] and electronic parts of this document.