You can learn 3D printing in our 3D printer farm! The term "3D printing" is actually quite vague and is used to describe various technologies which are defined by currently expiring patents. We will list some common ones below as we gather more experience.

If you are new to the subject, this introductory guide by 3D Hubs is worth a read! An overview of the parts is given in this 3D printer anatomy video.

You may also find our collection of 3D printing ideas interesting. Did you know one of our printers can print several colors/materials at once?

There are two big German speaking communities: 3D-Druck-Community and the German Reprap forum (many English subforums available, too).

Fused Filament Fabrication

All of our printers work by depositing molten plastic layer upon layer, a process which is called Fused Filament Fabrication (FFF) in the open source RepRap community or Fused Deposition Modelling (FDM) in most commercial contexts. We support the idea of open source fabrication and therefore call it FFF in this wiki.

Limits of FFF

• no printing out of thin air

support structures may have to be added where your model does not touch the buildplate and can be a real pain to remove...

• problems with overhangs > 45°

printing into thin air does not work very well either. This limit can be stretched a bit by efficient cooling, though.

• nozzle size determines the maximum achievable resolution

currently, all our printers are equipped with 0.4 mm nozzles.

Recommended Literature

• 3D printing guide by 3D Hubs
• Basics of 3D printing by Josef Prusa (ebook)
• 3D-Druck für alle by Florian Horsch from Heidelberg