EOS Formiga P110 SLS
About
The EOS Formiga is located at mHUB, and file submissions should be done through IIT's Ideashop. This machine creates high resolution, high strength plastic parts.
- General Stats:
- Material : White Nylon PA1100
Maximum Part Size : 184mm x 233mm x 316mm (7.2in x 9.1in x 12.4in)
- Layer Thickness : 0.1 mm
- X/Y Minimum wall thickness : 1 mm
- X/Y Minimum wall thickness for mechanical properties : 1.5 mm
- Price : $0.75 per cubic cm
- thin minimum wall thickness
- thin minimum layer thickness
- does not require supports
- porous surface allows for dyeing post-print
- More brittle than SLA prints
- Porous surface may require water proofing for some applications
- Part expands during sintering and shrinks during cooling. This may result in inaccurate dimensions.
Processing
- Main Article : Processing 3D Files
After you have designed the 3D model of your desired part, export the part in the STereoLithography (.stl) file format. The STL format describes only the surface geometry of the object instead of the object as a whole. Then open the file in the Autodesk Netfabb software to repair the file.
- We will only process STLs which have:
- 1 shell per continuous part
- 0 border edges
- 0 invalid orientations
- 0 holes.
Even if Netfabb reports no invalid orientations, if we see red triangles in repair mode there is a problem with your model. Print at your own risk.
Fixing a File
- Main Article : Fixing STLs
Students are welcome to use any of our computers for fixing their files in Netfabb or Rhino.
- Here are some tips to get you started at home:
- Ideally in Rhino you want one closed polysurface before meshing.
- NetFabb is better at meshing than Rhino. Consider opening the 3dm file in NetFabb to generate the STL instead.
- Default repair is decent at fixing holes, border edges, and invalid orientations. Then try using boolean join to reduce shells down to 1.
- If boolean join results in multiple shells then most likely the shells are not contiguous. Consider deleting extra shells in model.
- Extended repair wraps an existing STL in a new mesh. This can severely alter geometry and result in thin walled sections.
Printing a Part
Once a file has been processed and is ready to be printed, find a shop supervisor to help add it to the queue. The queue will be sent to mHUB for printing once a week. Estimate that it will take 1 week to receive your print after submitting to the queue.
