Skip to main content

Additive Manufacturing Lab

Overview

The Additive Manufacturing Laboratory is located in 155 Crabtree Building, amid BYU's state-of-the-art suite of research and teaching MFGEN laboratories.

What is Additive Manufacturing?

Additive Manufacturing(AM) is the technical term for what is commonly called 3D printing. There are many technologies in AM, all of which add material layer-by-layer to create a custom part. See below to find out what 3D printing technologies are represented.

Equipment

FFF/FDM (Filament) 3D Printing

The AML has several Prusa i3 MK3s 3D printers, which produce parts by extruding melted plastic though a nozzle. These printers can make parts out of several common types of plastic, including PLA, PETG, ABS, AND TPU. One experimental printer is also set up to print in multiple colors and materials in the same part.

FGF (Granule/Pellet) 3D Printing

Need to go even bigger? The AML's Ambit Xtrude is a Large-Area Additive Manufacturing (LAAM) system that extrudes plastic from pellets instead of from filament. With a high-volume auger feed and a nozzle 8x the size of most desktop machines, it can print in minutes what would typically take hours or days. The tradeoff is a rough surface finish, but this can be remedied by "Hybrid Manufacturing," where a part is 3D printed to near-net shape and then machined down to the required tolerances and surface finish.

SLA (Resin) 3D Printing

After filament-based printing, SLA printing using resins is the most popular desktop technology for additive manufacturing. The AML uses a Prusa SL1 to create parts from a photosensitive resin. These parts are typically more brittle than FFF/FDM parts, but have much better fine details and surface finish.

SLS (Powder) 3D Printing

The AML can produce true engineering-strength parts in its Sinterit Lisa Pro, which uses SLS technology to fuse Nylon powder using a high-powered laser. Printing using this machine is slightly more expensive the the other polymer/plastic-based technologies, but offers the best overall material properties in final production parts.

SLM (Metal Powder) 3D Printing

The centerpiece of the AML is the Concept Laser M2 Cusing Multilaser Machine. Twin 400-W lasers operate in tandem to melt metal powder into fully dense parts in steel, nickel alloys, even aluminum and titanium. Producing metal parts through SLM additive manufacturing is significantly more expensive than machining or casting them, but the Concept Laser M2 is an excellent option for producing complicated geometries that cannot be made through conventional manufacturing processes.

For questions about the AML or technologies represented, please contact the lab supervisor, Clint Bybee, at clintb@byu.edu or stop by his office in 105 CTB.