CNC machining vs metal 3D printing (SLM) - Which is stronger? Services by PCBWAY
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- Опубликовано: 4 июл 2024
- Few months ago I presented PCBWAY metal (SLM) 3D printing services. It was a pleasant surprise, how strong are those parts. Horizontally and vertically printed objects had similar strength. So, the obvious question was, how they preform compared to CNC machined objects? Let's find out.. Same test objects are CNC machined and 3D printed from aluminum and from stainless steel.
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Results can be downloaded from: www.mytechfun.com/video/243
0:00 Introduction
1:43 Unboxing
3:12 Surface quality
4:08 Advantage of 3D printing
4:37 Dimensional accuracy
7:37 Weight
9:15 Hook pulling test
10:29 Bending test
12:24 Results
12:58 About the price
13:51 Conclusions
#cncmachining #metal3dprinting #pcbway 
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Another interesting test and glad they provided the parts for the testing. Was kind of a bad reflection of their CNC machining given the lack of precision but good that they obviously treated your order like they most likely would any other order that isn’t being publicly reviewed.
Hi Igor - great video, as always! I can see the price of some parts, in the beginning of the video - but it would be very cool to explore PRICE more "explicitly" in some video. It would be cool to see some examples, how much some designs would cost to 3D Print in metal. Keep the good work, my friend!
This is EXACTLY what I wanted to know, too. You rock!
Thanks, keep the good work.
I love Your tests.
Best regards from Poland!
was waiting for this comparison for a while :D THANKS!
(wrt CNC being cheaper in your case, those are super simple parts, even for manual machining it is few minutes of work to make them, with proper cnc mill the major cost is in time for setting up the stock in the machine :D that's why cnc was so cheap, but with more complex parts where you need to "manually" create a proper toolpaths, use a lot of tools... it takes time and price go up exponentially compared to 3d printed/sintered one where price go up linearly with volume)
nice! great job Igor!! now I'll know what 2 order from PCB-way!!
Very interesting video 😉
Thank You and PCBWay 😉
I would also test that last part for stretching 😉 Like the first parts - to find the breaking points
Very cool video, thank you for the information. The advantage of 3D printed metal is you can reinforce parts more easily and make more optimal geometry. However, you lose some material strength, so the benefits of more advanced geometry have to outweigh the disadvantage of material properties.
How does the price scale with quantity? I imagine the CNC parts would get much cheaper at scale, since a lot of the work is the initial programming of the CNC, vs the cost of 3D printed parts is the part volume.
Price may variate a lot, depend of the size, shape of object, if 3D printer parts can fit on the bed etc.
thank you for the follow up with this video.
The results are interesting. Like you said, 3D printed parts can be more complex, so it's nice to know if you need something that can not be machined it can still be made and be reliable.
I wonder if more complex parts are actually closer in price compared to parts CNC'd out of flat stock metal. I'll have to go to PCB's website and play around with their quote system.
I'm curious to see how the results would change if the SLM parts were tempered. Wikipedia says "generally around 205 °C" for welded steel parts, so it could probably be done with a home oven.
Nice SLM 3D Print~
Thanks for the helpful comparison!
In real life, however, I would optimize the 3D print part.
I am sure that the 3D part would achieve even better results.
It is pretty obvious that machined solid metal parts will be stronger than 3D printed metal parts, what would be of more interest is if 3D printed metal parts are stronger than cast metal CNC'd parts although I dont know where you would get cast machined test subjects from, I think the results would be very close.
Yes, that would be an interesting comparison, who knows, maybe PCBWay will have this service too in the future :-)
It would be interesting to see the differences in CNC finishing options offered by pcbway.
If you do it again it would be nice to see the slm heat treated. I understand the standard test, but for slm there should be an exception. You're not supposed to print the same thing because it's addictive. You're supposed to print more where it's weak and not print strong. Remove material from top and bottom and add a hollow arch around the weak neck. With heat treating you should be able to get a part 2x strength at 0.7x weight. That's how SLM is intended to be used.
i wonder how it would compare to cast ? it seems a bit closer to that
What filaments did you use? But is it a mixture of plastic and metal powder? How much is 1 kg of this filament? Does it require a 'special extruder?
Great video.
About 3d printed plastic comparison I would like to compare it to PC+ABS Carbon Fiber. I hope it's most similar to alu, isn't it?
I have some PC+ABS filament, I will test it soon, but probably not even close to Alu.
5:15 Will the heat from your hand change the dimensions ?
The powder is a more expensive material.
what type of aluminium was the test object. pcb way offers 4 different types
Regarding the diensions.. i noticed they are all OVER except for the one that was 15.99mm so at least you could sand them down smaller.. i would hate even more for them to be under sized... the 3d printing is new technology but the CNC dimensions should be better.
Aren't the metal waste collected and remelted making it almost 100% efficient?
Yes, but the price is not the same, if you pay kg in that block or kg of the waste material.
no heat treatment
The big reason why these cnc shapes are cheaper then 3d printed parts is simple.
They are 2d forms.
Make something with weird shapes and multiple milling sides and the price of a cnc machined part will skyrocket.
Are you sure that there's no waste material when 3D-printing those parts? Surely that depends on the method, right? I mean, with FDM there's virtually no waste, but with other methods there might very well be.
It's SLM, where's the waste? Only possible source I can see is if you want to machine some part surfaces for a better finish and that's still not much material loss. Hell, I imagine you could probably use the waste from CNC machining with a bit of extra processing.
Why are you uploading the same video? 😂
Unfortunately there are many many factors that you failed to consider. Things like sizes of available stock material, tolerances, etc.
A skilled designer who understands design for manufacturing could design similar parts that would cost waaaay less. Cnc machining has many many factors.
3d printing is expensive and wasteful - especially at scale
It just feels wrong that you blurred that table. That took extra work for you. On top of that, you couldn't say what the 3d printed plastic was? Wow, unsubbed.
Can you provide a timestamp for blurred table? No idea what you mean, they only blurred table here is a result of the autofocus in his camera that puts his hands in focus and table out of focus. Why he didn't say what was the producer of this 3d printed plastic? Probably because it's all 10x more fragile and it doesn't make much sense to go into specifics into which brand produced this results. I am glad he tested out the plastic to see how it compares, all plastics should perform moreso the same.
@@adamo1139 I don't feel like going back and searching for it. But he had an excel table with all the properties of filaments he tested. He said this table is available to his Patreon only, and intentionally blurred it. When he selected the strongest plastic from the table, he kept the identity unknown.
EDIT: table is at 8:50