FDM, SLA, and SLS each win at different jobs. A practical guide to choosing the right 3D printing process for functional prototypes and end-use parts — by strength, accuracy, surface finish, and cost.
Category Archives: 3D Printing
3D Printing & Prototyping
A practical pre-flight guide to STL file prep—wall thickness, realistic tolerances, export resolution, watertight meshes, and the choices that control your 3D printing quote.
A step-by-step look at how veterinary CT (DICOM) data is segmented, meshed, and 3D printed into accurate, sterilizable surgical bone models—and what your clinic needs to provide.
How to order a 3D printed veterinary bone model: what CT/DICOM data we need, the step-by-step workflow, printing options, sterility, cost, and turnaround.
Category: 3D Printing, Case Studies One of the most rewarding things we do at PartSnap has nothing to do with product development. It’s printing bone models for veterinary surgeons. The Problem Orthopedic surgery on animals — especially dogs — is challenging for the same reason human orthopedics is challenging: bones are complex 3D shapes, fractures […]
Category: 3D Printing, Product Development We review hundreds of 3D print files every year. The same design mistakes show up again and again — and they’re almost always fixable with a few simple rules. Whether you’re designing your own part in SolidWorks or sending us a file from another engineer, these five rules will save […]
Category: 3D Printing We run both FDM and SLA in-house at PartSnap. Clients often ask which one they should use — and the answer is almost never “whichever is cheaper.” Here’s how we decide. The One-Line Answer SLA when it needs to look right. FDM when it needs to work right. That’s an oversimplification, but […]
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Sep
Sep
There is a lot of confusion regarding 3D printing threads when it comes to the translation of CAD data to a physical prototype. This is largely because CAD vendors have introduced some shortcuts to make it easier for engineers and designers to add “virtual” or “cosmetic” threads to the designs without manually drawing the actual […]
07
May
May
What are we to do about 3D printed guns? Some Americans rejoice at the idea; others panic. The now famous (or infamous) group Defense Distributed recently released plans for a fully 3D printed gun. The only non-3D printed parts are a single nail required for the firing pin and a non-functional metal block “required” to […]
15
Oct
Oct
A touching story of how 3D printing can be used to change and improve lives. The innovative doctors at Nemours use Stratasys FDM parts to build exoskeletons for children with disorders requiring assistance moving their arms. They call the device a Wilmington Robotic Exoskeleton (WREX): WREX is a modular body-powered orthosis that is mounted to a person’s […]
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