Glossary

Glossary

ABS

- Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene

A thermoplastic material which is used in plastic printers from which objects are made from.

Often ABS is used as a short form, actually referring to filament made of ABS: do you use ABS in your Mendel?

FDM

- Fused Deposition Method

Where a droplet of one material (plastic, wax, metal, etc.) is deposited on top or alongside the same material making a joint (by heat or adhesion).

Extrude

The act of placing the build material on the build platform. Normally by heating plastic to a liquid state and pushing it through a small nozzle.

Extruder

A group of parts which handles feeding and extruding of the build material.

Filament

Plastic material made into (often 3mm) string to be used in 3D printers.

Heated Bed

A build surface that is warmed in order to keep the base of an extruded part from cooling (and shrinking) too quickly. Such shrinking leads to warping internal stresses in RP parts. The most common result is corners of parts lifting off the build surface. Heated beds usually yield higher quality finished builds.

Hot End

The parts of the extruder that get hot enough to melt plastic, or potentially other materials. Hot end parts use materials that can stand up to ~240 C heat (for current thermoplastic extrusion). The hot end usually refers to the tip of the extruder as it should be hottest there.

PEEK

Polyether ether ketone

Heat resisting thermoplastic used as a thermal barrier in the extruder.

PLA

- Polylactic acid

A biodegradable polymer which is used as a 3D printer material.

Often PLA is used as a short form, actually referring to filament made of PLA: I use PLA in my Mendel.

PTFE

Polytetrafluoroethylene (Teflon)

A slippery thermoplastic often used as a barrel in the extruder to minimize friction with the filament.

RP

- Rapid Prototyping

Creating an object in a matter of hours on a "3D printer" as opposed to sending out a job to a modelling shop that can take days or weeks.

STL

- Stereo Lithographic

A file format used to describe 3D objects. A design program (e.g. AoI) can produce an STL file which can then be fed to a 3D printer or 3D rendering graphics package.