3D Printer

3D-printers are getting increasingly popular because of their innovative technique. They offer lots of possibilities to produce various products. Prototypes, shoes, dresses, body parts and prostheses, chairs, rocket parts; lots of products are already made using 3D-printers.

At FabLab Wageningen we have 3 different 3-D printers: a Prusa I3 Mk3s and a Craftbot Plus FDM printer and a Prusa SLS1S SLA printer. You can use these by printing ready-made digital designs or by first making your own digital design and then printing it.

Our FDM-printers use filament, thread on a spool which is molten inside the print head. We mostly use PLA, a recyclable plastic which is made out of raw materials of vegetable origins, but other filaments are potentially possible, as ABS, Nylon and PET, or even filaments containing (small) amounts of wood, metal or other materials. Our SLA-printer uses resin, that hardens under UV-light.

The resin printer needs special training to work with, as resin is a hazardous material, and after printing the prints needs to be cleaned and cured using a special process.

High on our wish list is an installation that could shred plastics, melt these and then extrude these to new filament wire, so we can fully recycle material and use it again to make new items.