A Beginners Guide to 3D Printing

4D Dodecahedron in a MakerBot Replicator 2. Image credit: Creative Tools via Flickr

Tuts + and James Thomas offer this tutorial (of sorts) to help get you familiar with the emerging world of 3D printing.  Read an excerpt here and follow the link to the full article.

“…for designers 3D printing does offer a tantalising prospect: the capability to produce objects without the constraints of traditional manufacturing, the capability even to fabricate objects on your desk without traditional making or engineering skills…

…It would be incorrect to think of 3D printing as a single technology. Instead it is a set of technologies following a shared idea of additive manufacturing driven by software.

So what is additive manufacturing? Many manufacturing techniques start with a block of material and selectively remove it until we are left with the desired object. Additive manufacturing turns this on its head, starting with a blank canvas and adding only what is required for the final object.

In itself this additive manufacturing is nothing special—a child building sand castles on the beach is using additive manufacturing. It is the addition of using digital technology for a reliable and accurate result that makes 3D printing special.

Typically this works by slicing an object we wish to create into thin sections and building these slices one at a time, stacked on top of each other. Think of building a pyramid as a series of square buildings, each smaller than the last, stacked up to make a 3D shape.”

Read the Full Article here.