LESSON 1.2 · 2:08 · CHAPTER 1 · WHY PRINT BIG
Don't pay for the inside
A printed tool is a skin on ribs; a machined tool starts as a full block and turns most of it into chips. The saving is in the volume you don't buy.
Predict · at 0:41 in the video
A one metre by one metre mould. The aluminium block weighs about 595 kilograms. The printed rib-shell about 105. How much less material do you buy for the print?
About five point seven times less. And that's the real saving. Not that plastic is cheaper than aluminium, but that you don't buy the volume the tool doesn't need.
Further reading
This course is our own. These books go deeper.
- The economics of Big Area Additive Manufacturing, Post et al., Solid Freeform Fabrication Symposium, 2016
- Additively manufactured carbon fibre-reinforced composites: state of the art and perspective, van de Werken et al., Composites Part A, 2020
About the numbers
Simulations in this lesson are our own. Where a number rests on an assumption or a single source, the video marks it with an asterisk and says where it comes from.
Up next · 1.3 · 2:15Print time for a car