The Influence of Products Placement Direction on 3D Printing Quality

How to put products can also influence the quality of the 3D parts, which is different from other craftworks and often neglected by designers. Here we will discuss the influence of position directions on precision, printing time, product tension, and surface quality to put forward an idea that the placement direction is an important quality factor.

 If you need to print a pipe and put it vertically just like the left side one in the image below, it requires only printing the circle ring repeatedly, which can add layer upon layer. After finishing the printing, you can get a precise pipe with a nearly smooth surface. And if you lay it on its side horizontally for printing (the right side one in the image), although you print the same item, it is a different requirement. This way, you need to print a square in different sizes and composite them to get a pipe. It would have more lines on the surface. Supporting inside and outside of the pipe may cause the deformation of the product and affects the precision of the terminal product.

Thus, different direction for placement influences the product precision.

Printing Time

It also affects printing time. Take the pipe we mention above. Horizontal placement takes much less time than vertical, mainly because it has fewer layers for printing. If the pipe is 30mm in height and 0.1mm for each layer, to complete the products, horizontal placement demands printing 100 layers, and vertical needs 300 layers which means it would take double times for vertical direction printing. Thus, the placement direction affects the time or even determines the time.

 The Parts tension

Some 3D printing tech has the problem of different tension for each direction, especially for FDM, the x and y direction is different from the Z direction.

During the design, it is essential to consider the force direction for function or supporting parts. For the products printed with FDM, if a force suffered from the stretch in the Z direction, it is easy to cause stratified or break, but the same force applied in the X or Y direction would cause no problem. According to the report, the pulling force suffered in X and Y directions is five times that in the Z direction. Thus the placement direction affects parts’ tension. You have to consider the placement direction during the design.

The supporting material

The different placement direction needs individual support. The more supporting parts, the more time and material for printing, and there are higher costs for product printing. It does not mean that it is not good to have more supporting parts. In many cases, it is a game result of precision, success rate, and printing cost. For example, with SLA technology, if you want to print a part like a paper when put horizontally, no supporting is needed in theory. But the material shrinking may cause parts to curve after printing and leads to printing failure. While, when you put it at a sloped angle of about 45°, it would bring many supporting parts, but it can solve the problem of shrinking and cause a higher success for printing.

The surface quality

General, flat, or vertical products have high-quality surfaces. The large the curve is, the more stripes on the surface. The placement direction is different for various 3D printing technologies:

For FDM, the upside part is smooth, and the lower side connecting to the supporting platform has high light like glass and marks left by the supporting.

There are supporting marks on the lower part surface in SLA technology, which need follow-up polish. The upper side is relatively smooth without support marks.

For SLS, 3DP, and SLM technologies are based on powder. It has a  matte surface with a grain on the lower side than the upper side.

For Polyjet spray craftwork, the part with supports is a matte effect, while others are high lights.

WKproto is a professional rapid prototyping and low-volume production manufacture specializing in 3D printing, CNC machining, and Vacuum Casting. Our factory and parter factories enable rapid prototyping of designs from our customers and low volume production for market verification.

We have three factories. 3D printing factory meets the demands of most 3D printing services with 100 SLA machines, 10 SLS machines, 10 MJF machines, 10 SLM machines, and 20 FDM machines. CNC machining factories for processing metals, plastic and more materials with more than 200 machines for CNC milling/CNC lathes/EDM / Wire EDM and the Vacuum Casting factory is for low volume production for ABS、PC、PP、PE、PA、POM、PMMA、PVC.