Sunday, June 12, 2011

3D Printing Offers Fast, Accurate Solutions for Sophisticated Designs

By Robotics Trends Staff - Filed May 09, 2011

Bip Cam Project by BVS. Model made of laser-sintered polyamide and dyed black. Prototyping phase for the camera casing in view of mass production.


Founded in 2009, Sculpteo is the specialist in online platforms for 3D printing. The company provides access to a fleet of 3D printers for Web users who wish to produce 3D models at an affordable cost and in record time. Sculpteo.com has put rapid prototyping techniques—until now affordable to only a few mega-corporations—within the reach of young, innovative businesses, whatever their size.

Sculpteo.com is a fast, flexible, and precise solution for 3D model manufacturing. The Web user (individual or company) first uploads 3D files of their designs to Sculpteo.com. The designs are then analyzed and the manufacturing cost calculated in real time with great accuracy. The user can then fine-tune the model or ask Sculpteo.com to suggest improvements to the files to make them even more true to life. The user then simply clicks the order button and the manufactured design is shipped anywhere in the world within a few days.

Sculpteo is democratizing 3D printing to meet the needs of professionals for whom product parts must be perfect, as is the case in robotics.

3D printing makes it possible to create an actual object from a 3D computer file: A plastic material is deposited and solidified in successive 0.1 cm layers. As a result, designs obtained through Sculpteo.com are totally identical to the 3D model and fully functional. The creative possibilities are endless, and laser sintering of polyamide (3D printing technology) allows the manufacture of parts that traditional technologies cannot achieve.

Binocular vision robot head – BVS Model produced by laser-sintering polyamide.
BVS, for instance, is one of many small businesses that use Sculpteo.com’s 3D printing service. Thanks to Sculpteo.com, BVS successfully produced a binocular-vision robot head and camera casing, both made of laser-sintered polyamide.
 

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