Model Multi-Material parts for 3D Printers

john_kuyper

I was just participating in a Webinar about 3D printers.  There is research towards printing parts with varying material properties.  For example, you can 3D print a shoe sole.  The bottom of the shoe would be a tough, hard material.  The top would be a soft material that is comfortable to walk on.  This part could be 3D printed (instead of bonding layers).

In the Webinar, they mentioned that although 3D printers are capable of printing such parts, there is no CAD system that can design it.  Maybe Onshape could address this issue?

lougallo

I would suggest doing something like an over mold and split the part and set the material that way.. As far as it going to the printer, that would be something you can then set there.

3dcad

Interesting idea, part material: 70% rubber, 26% PLA, 4% carbon fiber and Onshape would calculate strenght, elastics and other properties - test environment let's us stress part using different forces per area / direction and see resulted realtime changes on model.

Printer mixes materials as requested and creates whole shoe at single run.

I might give it a try if such option was available

andreas_lechthaler

I thought about something similar concerning preprocessing and exporting mesh-data for professional visualization.

mahir

It hasn't arrived yet, but I have a multi-material desktop 3D printer on order. I imagine it's just a matter of aligning geometry from separate STL files to the same shared coordinate system prior to slicing. This should happen automatically if the STL files are generated from parts in the same part studio or assembly. @lougallo, is that the case?