Selective Laser Sintering Overview and the Best SLS 3D Printers on the Market

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Hi everyone! This is Top 3D Shop, and in this video, we will tell you about industrial and desktop SLS 3D printers — how they work, what they are capable of, and, of course, which devices deserve special attention so that you can choose the best model for your demands.
SLS 3D printing technology dates back to the 1980s. It was invented by Dr. Carl Deckard, at that time a student at the University of Texas, and his professor Dr. Joe Beaman. The first commercial printers based on this technology entered the market in 1992. They were meant for rapid prototyping, but soon the technology proved itself useful in a variety of different industries, such as healthcare, engineering, and consumer goods production, not to mention the rest. Now SLS, or selective laser sintering, is one of the most popular types of additive manufacturing, providing more and more opportunities both for businesses and customers.
How do such printers work? Selective laser sintering, as the name suggests, uses a high-powered laser to heat the printing material, which is always in a powder form, to make a solid object. The powder is heated just to the point of sintering, not melting. To start printing, you need a CAD file, or a 3D scan, which you’ll export in a 3D printable file format, like OBJ or STL.
Before the printing process commences, the printer preheats the build chamber, which should be filled with powder, to the temperature just below the sintering point, and printing begins. The powder is dispersed in a thin layer on the print bed, and the laser heats certain areas, so that the powder sinters and forms the first solid layer of the future model. The print bed then goes down a bit, and the process continues, layer after layer, until the job is done.
Once your 3D model is complete, it needs to be cooled down and cleaned up from the remains of unfused powder at a cleaning station. Then it’s for you to decide whether to use it right away or add some post-processing, like sandblasting, polishing, or dying, if needed.
All SLS 3D printers’ workflows seem to be pretty similar. They can differ in such parameters as the type and power of lasers employed, the build volume, and the types of compatible powders. Still, there is one main feature which allows dividing such machines into two main types — that is their size. First SLS printers were enormous, and even the smallest of them required no less than 10 square meters of installation size. Naturally, such devices couldn’t be regarded as a home-use solution and remained the privilege of industrial companies until 2016, when the first benchtop SLS 3D printer hit the market. It wasn’t small enough yet to be used at home, but was perfectly suitable for small businesses and prosumers. Since then, a decent number of desktop SLS printers have emerged in the market. Let’s discuss the two types more specifically, and compare the most noteworthy models in each class.