Services

Training

Consumer level desktop printing is an exciting new frontier.  There are hundreds of different companies out there.  Some are good, some are awful, and some are perfect for some types of people, but awful for others!  The aim of our training program is to help you cut through all of the information out there and figure out what is important for you.  Which printer best fits your needs and what do you need to learn for a strong foundation to be successful with that printer.

We have helped a number of individuals, schools, and small businesses get started with 3D printing and move on to successfully using their printer in daily operations.  Our training program will allow you to take advantage of our combination of decades of industrial and educational institution training experience, strong technical engineering foundations, and hundreds of hours spent directly working with consumer level 3D printers to get a strong program with a greatly reduced learning curve.  

Check out this page for information on our training classes for individual or contact us for training courses for schools and industry.  

Laser Cutting

Printed Solid operates a production laser cutting facility.  Machines are CO2 lasers capable of cutting many plastics and woods and can handle up to a full sheet of plywood per cut.  

Pricing is quoted per job.

Design

If you have something you would like designed, but you do not know how to do it yourself, we can help. With over 15 years of professional experience and a masters degree in mechanical engineering, we have the training and practical experience to help turn your idea into a reality.

We can provide you with several different concept sketches. We will then generate a 3D CAD file in an neutral file (step or iges) and a 2 dimensional drawing.

Design work starts at a $250 minimum and is then billed hourly.

Printing

3D Printing is a name that has been applied to a manufacturing process where material is deposited on a plate in repeated thin pattern layers to build a three dimensional structure. This name applies to a number of different technologies and materials.

It is a great process for making quick and inexpensive prototypes of an invention.  It is also a great method for making extremely complex parts that would be prohibitively expensive or impossible to make using conventional manufacturing processes.

The process is fairly straightforward.

Obtain a computer model of the part you would like to make.  This can be done by designing it in a CAD or 3D modeling program,  digitally scanning an existing object, or downloading a model you like from a file sharing program like youmagine.com.

At Printed Solid, we use the FDM (Fused Deposition Modeling) process.  Our machines can build parts as large as about 12"X12"X9" or 9"X9"X12".  We can then plastic weld or glue multiple pieces together to build larger parts

We offer a wide variety of material choices.  If you are familiar with the materials, you can request your preference or we will recommend a choice based on your part.

Browse through the shop to see some of the materials we keep in stock regularly.

Accuracy of parts varies by design, but an accuracy of 0.4mm (0.015”) in the XY plane and up to 0.05mm (0.002”) in the Z plane is possible.

Parts can be printed with a wall thickness of the users preference and filled with a grid pattern to give strength at a low weight.  Minimum wall thickness for strength should be 1.6mm.

Pricing is custom per job but the following general minimums apply.

$40 per job minimum "Download and Print" This is a model off of thingiverse, youmagine, etc with an appropriate commercial use allowed license.  The model must be demonstrably printable.  i.e. the description of the model includes suggested printing parameters and other users have printed it.  

$100 per job minimum for prints of custom customer designed part.  

Assembly and finishing work need to be quoted for each job.