Benefit #1: No Increased Cost to Make Complex Items
In the case of traditional manufacturing, the more complex the shape of an object, the more expensive it is to make. With 3D printers, the cost of making complex shapes does not increase, and making an ornately shaped complex object takes no more time, skill, or cost than printing a simple square. Making complex items at no added cost will break traditional pricing models and change the way we calculate manufacturing costs.
Benefit #2: Product Diversity Without Increasing Cost
A 3D printer can print so many shapes that it can act like an artisan and make a different shaped item every time. Traditional manufacturing equipment is less versatile and makes a limited variety of shapes. 3D printing eliminates the cost of training machinists or purchasing new equipment, and a 3D printer only requires different digital design blueprints and a new batch of raw materials.
Benefit #3: No assembly required
3D printing enables parts to be molded in one piece. Traditional mass production is built on assembly lines; in modern factories, machines produce identical parts that are then assembled by robots or workers (even across continents). The more parts that make up a product, the more time and cost it takes to assemble.
3D printers can print a door and the matching hinges on it at the same time through layered manufacturing, eliminating the need for assembly. Omitting assembly shortens the supply chain, saving money on labor and transportation. The shorter the supply chain, the less pollution there is.
Benefit 4: Zero-time delivery
3D printers can print on demand. Just-in-time production reduces a business's physical inventory, and new business models will be possible as companies can use 3D printers to create special or customized products to meet customer needs based on customer orders. Zero-time-delivery production minimizes the cost of long-distance shipping if the items people need are produced on demand and close to home.
Benefit 5: Unlimited design space
Traditional manufacturing techniques and artisans make products with limited shapes, and the ability to create shapes is limited by the tools used. For example, traditional wooden lathes can only make round objects, mills can only process parts assembled with milling cutters, and mold-making machines can only make die-cast shapes. 3D printers can break through these limitations and open up a huge amount of design space, even to the point of making shapes that may currently only exist in nature.
Printing process - three-dimensional design
The design process of 3D printing is: first, through the computer modeling software modeling, and then will be built into the three-dimensional model "partition" into layer by layer cross-section, that is, slices, in order to guide the printer layer by layer printing.
The standard file format for collaboration between design software and printers is the STL file format. An STL file uses triangles to approximate the surface of a simulated object. The smaller the triangles, the higher the resolution of the resulting surface.PLY is a scanner that produces 3D files by scanning, and the resulting VRML or WRL files are often used as input files for full-color printing.
The above reference? Baidu Encyclopedia-3D Printing