Imagine if 3D printing was available to everyone. And for a reasonable price. How comfortable it would be to simply print whatever artifacts that are needed on the fly. Imagine a world where whenever a need arises for a particular item, it is immediately satisfied. As a direct consequence of patents expiring in 2014 such reality is one step closer from becoming a status quo. The SLS printing companies are springing around like mushrooms after the life-giving rain. This, in line with the law of demand and supply drops the price of this type of 3D printers. It might be very well possible in the not so distant future to become financially viable having a 3D printer in a regular household. Thus making this technolog truly mainstream.
SLS machine cost, a company from Poland, created by previous Google and ABB employers has been constantly pushing the envelope since 2014. It has an advantage of a firstmover in this huge emerging industry. Even though it has been around for little more than three years it already shipped a functioning 3D printer and soon it will release a second version of it’s LISA printer. In the past the cost of similar devices numbered in millions of USD. Right now you can pick up one from Sinterit for just 8990,00 $. As you can see the progress is rapid and exponential. For some additional money you can also purchase Sinterit LISA set that will contain essential items: A sandblaster- item used in post-processing, thanks to compressed air and little glass balls it cleans the printed model’s surface, penetrating all of the corners of it, it also helps to highlight every detail. Also in the set you will find abrasive Material(4kg), a powder sieve( device dedicated to refreshing used powder – after that, the material is clean and ready to be used again. Within the starting set you will be also additionaly getting 4 kg of fresh building material which in this case is Powder PA12. On top of that the startert’s pack contains 2kg of the powder that has been used before and has been refreshed.
Compared to other 3D printing technologies SLS is also more robust and cheaper in the end. It steems from the ease of reuse of the building material and the ability of fitting many parts in the same chamber. Also because, it is fully self-supporting the post processing is much less complicated and further reduces costs. – There is no need for redundant supporting structures that need to be removed later on. Also, the SLS prints are much more durable in comparison to SLA or FDM printing.
