Previously, if you wanted to make an object out of plastic you had to get an absurd amount of people involved. Investors in the tooling, plastics suppliers, moldmakers, people to work the machinery, et cetera. Only corporations could muster that kind of scratch and manpower, leaving a huge gulf between themselves and the independent designer.
Inexpensive 3D printers have narrowed that gulf, enabling individuals to make plastic parts without leaving the house or picking up the phone. But they've been limited to working with mostly ABS-like plastic. So now we see a new gulf opening up between individual maker and corporation, one of materials science. Large chemical companies and their deep-pocketed patrons will have access to materials currently impossible for the lone maker to afford.
A good example of this is the glass-fiber-reinforced polyamide we saw BASF use to create plastic automotive rims. A similar material, this time produced by an automotive parts collective patronized by Ford, has popped up as an award winner in this week's sexily-named 42nd annual Society of Plastics Engineers Innovation Awards Gala. This is a bit convoluted, but bear with us: Ford designed the bracket you see above, which is made out of a material called LGF PP—that's Long Glass Fiber Polypropylene Resin—developed in collaboration between global materials company Styron, system supplier and molder Magna Exterior, and toolmaker Advantage Mold. In other words, yeah, there were a lot of people on that e-mail chain.
So what does the thing even do, and why is it noteworthy? That little bracket is used in the Ford Fusion for mounting bumpers and headlights to cars. This almost beggars belief, but because the glass fibers add an unusual amount of "stiffness, strength and impact-resistance" to the part, they reduce the Head Injury Criterion of motorists involved in an accident by some 30%, which helped Ford take home that trophy.
Individual makers still have plenty of wiggle room with the limited plastics available for 3D printers, as seen by ArtizanWork's "Sweater" Case. If advanced materials like Styron's ever trickle down to us, it will be a while yet. We still hope that it will happen, of course, and charitably assume Styron isn't taunting us by re-naming their material—while its scientific name is LGF PP, the company is calling it INSPIRE™.
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The main issue in terms of the proliferation of 'engineering thermoplastics' into 3D printing is that as far as I understand it (And in private, I'll admit to possibly working for one such large corporation), even with very deep pockets, we still unfortunately have to abide by the laws of physics.
As such, any kind of FDM process will, with today's technology and understanding, struggle to work with any form of semi-crystalline polymer at the very least (Read PP, PA, POM, PET, PBT etc...). This is annoying, but at the minute, an unfortunate and unavoidable artifact of the state of the art.
One of reasons for this, is the problem whereby molten material almost invariably lacks sufficient latent heat to melt the previous layer it is deposited upon. So you could in theory 'print' something, but the layers of your print would tend to de-laminate. Heat it more you might say, fire a laser up in that.... but these products remain organic (not in the Whole Foods sense) and they tend to get ugly/nasty when you overheat them.
Likewise, there is an issue during printing of Density. I can only really talk about semi-crystalline polymers, but they tend to have the annoying habit of being lower density when molten. This might not seem like an issue, but if you think about it, it means the material shrinks to allow for an increase in it's inherent density when becoming solid... so cutting things short, the printing process would create stresses between each layer of deposited material... Not the best method for creating a 'robust' part. Sure, injection moulding creates all kinds of crazy stresses in a part, but most materials don't usually have the unfortunate habit of de-laminating under the slightest load, so us deep pocketed industrial types get away with it.
I could go into greater detail, but I'll come off as some sad dude who knows too much about plastic, and how to design stuff with it (I'm already forbidden from approaching the subject amongst friends... but they work in banks so they aren't much use to anyone.....).
If someone comes up with a way to use high performance polymeric materials in a home 3D printer, regulatory affairs aside, the big chemical corporations would be the first to promote it. I for one would be all for someone overcoming what are fairly fundamental issues with most 3D printing processes in conjunction with engineering thermoplastics.
Till then, 3D printing will be cool, allow for all sorts of interesting things, but might not always offer material efficient solutions, or high performance parts for demanding applications (deep pocketed marketing speak). PLA or ABS will for a while be as exciting as it gets...
Damn Physics.