Experimenting with digital actuality is an thrilling — and considerably unnerving — course of. It usually requires a lot trial and error, which is exactly why the staff at Areas wanted to discover a closing stage prototyping course of to assist them. That’s the place Shapeways stepped in. Areas loves Shapeways’ dimensional accuracy and sturdiness and has used 3D printing –primarily the Multi Jet Fusion Plastic PA12 materials – ever since first discovering the corporate.
Why is it helpful to print with Shapeways over conventional manufacturing strategies akin to injection molding?
Areas: We’re continuously inventing and iterating, more often than not beneath very tight time constraints. Utilizing 3D printing allowed us to make elements that broke some guidelines and to make adjustments to elements shortly. Shapeways helped us create elements that might not be manufactured via typical injection molding. Undercuts are a serious concern with any tooling for injection molding and create lots of work to get elements made.

Areas makes use of 3D printing to construct digital actuality experiences. (Photograph courtesy of Areas)
Which is your most used materials?
Our most used materials is the Multi Jet Fusion Plastic PA12 as a result of it offers us acceptable decision and is sturdy.
Why do you print with Shapeways versus desktop 3D printing?
The standard and amount of the Shapeways elements we print are the principle profit. For probably the most half, desktop printing doesn’t produce the identical high quality and backbone. Additionally, most desktop printers might be unreliable, which is one thing we can not take an opportunity with when printing massive portions of elements for our installations. Most of our elements are conceived utilizing desktop printing strategies after which turned over to Shapeways for printing en masse.
What are the added advantages of utilizing Shapeways?
We’ve been impressed with the customer support. Private consideration is essential after we are working in opposition to tight deadlines.
Extra from the Materials of the Month Collection: PA12
Half One: Materials Overview
Half Two: Materials Comparability: Nylon Plastics
Half Three: Enterprise Instance: PA12 used within the digital actuality business
Half 4: Tutorial: Put up processing PA12