Large Scale 3D Printing

When To Consider Large Scale 3D Printing

It takes a large scale 3D printer to print furniture, vehicle parts and architectural components. Obviously, size is the driving factor in choosing to use large-format printing but there’s more to it than that. Here’s a breakdown of some of the less-obvious considerations:

• Unibody Parts – Often, producers are already able to fabricate their large objects through traditional methods of assembly but those objects would perform better if they were produced as one solid piece, something only a large 3D printer can do efficiently.
• Weight Reduction – Large objects are usually made of wood, metal, or injection molded plastics. Printing the same objects in plastic will make them much lighter, especially when factoring that users can easily adjust the density infill of 3D printed objects. Consolidating large assemblies into single components also reduces weight by eliminating the need for fasteners like nuts and bolts.
• Faster Development – The larger an object, the longer it takes to create and setup the tooling to fabricate it through traditional means. With 3D printing, there are essentially no setup steps so large prototypes are significantly faster to print than to make them any other way. A large object may take a while to print, but by cutting out the time-consuming tooling step, it may also be faster to do production runs of large objects, depending upon the specifics.
• Reduced Cost – 3D printed large parts can be cost competitive with conventionally-made parts almost entirely because of the tooling costs of the latter. Consolidated assemblies usually cost less as well because fewer materials have to be sourced from different places.
• Design Freedom – Using conventional manufacturing methods, many geometries are just not possible, such as internal channels and complex lattice structures. Many large objects, like furniture, benefit from such features and XL printers are the only way to realize those designs.

Large Scale 3D Printing Examples

• Restoration and replication – XL 3D printing has become rather popular among paleontologists as the technology allows them to both study and preserve the delicate fossils that they regularly handle.
• Furniture – Thanks to large-scale 3D printers it is now possible to create complex functional designs within a fully digitized process chain. From full-size prototyping to production of 3D printed furniture.
• Display advertising – XL 3D printers are perfect for making high-quality, modern signage and lettering for retail stores, businesses and exhibitions.
• Props – With the introduction of large scale 3D printers, designers can now produce enormous set pieces – overnight. 3D printing can help designers quickly manifest their wildest imaginations into the physical reality, and the Film & TV industry has taken notice.

Pellet Extrusion

One of the differences between desktop-sized machines and XL printers is the possibility to utilize pellet extrusion systems on the large printers. Pellet extrusion doesn’t use spooled filament as feedstock but instead uses the same virgin plastic pellets that are used for injection molding, which are much cheaper than spooled filament. This makes it easy to mix different plastics to make custom polymer blends and colors. These systems can also take shredded plastics as feedstock, which enables users to directly recycle water bottles, milk jugs, and failed and unneeded prints into new objects. Such a degree of a circular ecosystem can not be achieved with any other form of manufacturing.

That’s all great but what compels most users to opt for pellet extrusion is its blazing speed as the technology enables output of several kilograms per hour. Printing times scale exponentially with part size so having a high extrusion rate is pretty important for large-format 3D printing. One drawback of pellet extrusion systems is that they struggle with retraction, a feature that filament extruders employ to improve surface finish by pulling back on the filament during non-extrusion travel moves; retraction reduces or eliminates blobs, dots, and stringing on prints. Some XL printers can operate with both filament and pellet extrusion systems, allowing users to choose the best toolhead for their specific application.