"It seems kind of like magic," began a science segment on the January 30, 1989, episode of Good Morning America, "but it's called stereolithography." Onscreen, a machine shoots UV light into a vat of liquid, causing the liquid to harden. Later in the segment, Chuck Hull, the inventor of stereolithography, describes the process as "a three-dimensional printer." Hull founded 3D Systems to create prototypes of industrial parts. Today it also sells a line of hobbyist printers that ditch the vat of liquid in favor of materials that harden as they cool. The Cube from 3D Systems is currently in its third generation, and 3D printing has come a long way too: The Cube is recommended for kids as young as eight.
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Model: 3D Systems Cube
Produced: Rock Hill, South Carolina
Time to disassemble: 5 hours, 17 minutes, 47 seconds
Number of parts: 677
Loading the Materials
The Cube can print designs using two different materials simultaneously. These materials are loaded into the printer in material cartridges—one on the left side of the machine and one on the right. Inside each cartridge is a spool of filament. Hanging off its side is a print jet tube ending in a print jet and a nozzle. When a new cartridge is loaded, each tube is fed through a channel between the front housing and rear housing of the printer, and each nozzle is locked into position in a hole in each print head.
Prepping the Printer
Designs can be sent to the printer through a USB connector or wirelessly from a computer or smartphone via the wireless antenna on the printer's main control board. First, the printer automatically levels the print pad, which is attached to the print platform by magnets. If the placement requires fine-tuning, the adjustment knobs on the platform can be manually twisted until the print pad sits at the appropriate height. Once the pad is level, the user applies a layer of adhesive called Cube Glue that will fix the base of the object in place during printing.
Printing an Object
The print jets and the platform perform coordinated movements to lay down hot filament in the precise pattern needed for a given object. Three stepper motors move the parts, one for each direction: The print jet moves side to side, and the platform moves both up and down and front to back.
Different filament materials require different temperatures and speeds, so a printed circuit board in the cartridges communicates with the printer to tell it what material is being used. The cartridge motors feed the filament out of the cartridge accordingly. The filament passes through the print jet tubes and into the print jets, where an aluminum heating element heats it to between 210 and 260 degrees Celsius, depending on what material it is, and pushes it through the nozzle and onto the object being made. To clean out material from the previous cartridge that might hang around and contaminate the 3D-printed item, the print head moves to the far left or right and rubs the nozzle against a wiper. Old filament falls into a purge bin in the inner wall of the printer, which must be periodically emptied.
After printing is complete, the user lifts the print pad out of the printer. The printed object will still be glued in place, but after a ten-minute soak in warm water, it can be separated easily with the scraper. The glue will wash right off.
This story appears in the March 2016 issue of Popular Mechanics.
