Printing Methods

Fused Deposition Material (FDM) is the most common form of printing in commercial or industry 3-D printers. This method of printing uses spools of material, which is fed by a motor into a nozzle, which lays down the plastic layer by layer. Mechanically, there is the most amount of moving parts to this type of machine, as your have to move the nozzle in an X-Y direction to layer plastic down, and movement of the Z direction to move the nozzle above the next layer. 

Many commercial printers do this process very well, but require a lot of maintenance, upgrades or part swaps ie if a motor goes bad, lubrication of bearings and wheels, the list can go on. Even still, with an FDM machine's complexity, it has become a sort of hobby for many tinkers or makers around the word. 

Even though this method has many moving parts, the cost of making a FDM machine can be extremely cheap, machines going as much as $300 USD for a well functioning machine. Even more amazing is the massive community and open source technology that allows are a vast amount of resources to be at your disposal.

Our Prusa i3 MKS3+ is a $799 USD machines created by PRUSA, whom is a leader of open source 3-D printing, is what we trust for their very well reviewed machines. 

Digital Light Processing (DLP) uses a vat of photopolymer resin, a liquid plastic that cures under ultraviolet light. This method uses a vat with a film of plastic that allows ultra violet image to pass through it. Cured material then builds the model layer by layer on a build plate that rises up from the vat, until a model is created. Mechanically, this process requires less movement, as the motor moves a build plate away from the vat of material, but there is no movement in the X or Y direction like a FDM machine. 

Each layer of the model is a flash of ultra violet, so because of this, each layer will take the same amount of time regardless how much area the build plate has. The real limit for this method versus FDM, is how good of a resolution the image you are flashing on the build plate is. 

This process, as well has been getting more affordable, but still has some limitations. It is far more expensive to make a machine that can make a large volume, unlike the FDM machines, which can print larger volumes for cheaper. This process, as well requires post processing and washes to remove excess resin. 

Our machine, a Elegoo Saturn, is a $500 USD resin printer, which uses a 4K LCD monitor for the image resolution for each layer, which guarantees excellent image quality per layer, which means higher resolution prints.