Significantly shorten support removal cycle times of FDM printed parts and increase consistencies with an automated, software-driven post-printing solution.

FDM has established itself as one of the most popular, cost-effective 3D printing methods for large-scale manufacturers. While this technology enables rapid design and printing, bottlenecks often arise in the third and final step of the integrative 3D process – support removal. At this time, the industry-accepted method of support removal for FDM is done with the use of chemical submersion tanks. Not only is support removal by way of submersion tanks an extremely slow process, but it can also be somewhat ineffective for parts with complex geometries. If support materials remain after the part has been submerged, manual labor is typically required to complete the post-printing process, wasting valuable technician time.

This paper covers:

• This automated solution’s significant (73%) decrease in cycle time compared to the common submersion tank solution.
• The technology’s ability to process very complex parts, even those featuring multiple internal channels filled with support material, at comparable rates to basic parts.
• Alleviating the post-print bottleneck and expediting iterative designs to ramp up production volumes with this software-controlled approach.

Post-printing FDM
Support removal for FDM can be revolutionized with this alternative approach that combines software-driven automation and patent-pending chemistry solutions. The efficiencies that this solution allows for saves manufacturers on time, costs, and materials.