3D Printing

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3D Printing

3D Printing

All our products are 3d-printed in our little factory.

3d-printed objects are made by laying down successive layers of material (plastic) using a precision nozzle that moves and deposits melted material based on instructions from a computer. We typically print in 0.12 mm thick layers so a 24 cm bust has a total of 2000 layers that must be printed. This makes 3d-printing time-consuming. Our largest busts can take well over 24 hours to complete.


Timelapse showing the printing of a bust, layer-by-layer

Quality

The first 3d-printer was created 40 years ago, and it has been continuously improved since then. Even though the latest generating printers we use are very good, they are not perfect.
Busts generally have a very nice appearance, but up close there are some imperfections that we describe below.
After we've printed a model, we'll inspect it for defects. If we find any, we'll discard it and re-print.

Quality

Layer lines

Since plastic is printed layer by layer, these layers can be visible when examining the model close up. Small imperfections can also appear. How visible they are depends mostly on the color chosen.
These layer lines are not considered defects - they are a natural result of how 3d-printing works and we've put a lot of effort into makeing them as invisible as possible.

Forstørret område som viser laglinjer
Viser byste med og uten støttematerialer Forstørret bilde av et øre
Quality

Support material

The material is printed bottom up. For a bust, the print starts at the chest and finished at the top of the head. Each layer is printed on top of the previous layer so that the new layer has some support to rest on until it solidifies. Without support, gravity will pull the soft plastic downwards.
Parts of the model will typically have no existing material to support itself. A good example is the bottom layer of an ear lobe - there is nothing below the lobe supporting it.
For areas like this, we print extra supporting material that we remove after the print. In the areas where the model rested on the extra support, the surface will be rougher. These rough areas are only of the bottomside of parts and are normally not visible except when examining the model close up from below. These rough areas are not considered defects.

Quality

Glossy lines

On some colors, expecially glossy, vertical or diagonal lines can appear when light hits the model from certain angles.
These lines are not considered defects.

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