Materials

Materials & Prototyping at You3Dit

Materials are the foundation of every physical part or component.
Just like a great meal starts with the right ingredients, a great product starts with the right material(s) — and using them properly. At You3Dit, we see design engineers and digital fabricators as the chefs of the digital manufacturing world, carefully choosing materials to meet the functional, aesthetic, and production needs of each part.

At You3Dit.com, we specialize in bringing ideas to life — from napkin sketches to early-stage prototypes. And while the universe of materials is vast, our process helps you filter choices to those best suited for your design, rapid prototyping and short-run production challenges.

Prototyping Methodologies

We focus on digital manufacturing processes that enable fast, cost-effective prototyping, such as:

• Additive Manufacturing (3D Printing)

• CNC Machining / Turning

• Bent Sheet Metal Forming

• Laser Cutting / Waterjet Cutting

Each method has its own “sweet spot” of compatible materials — and choosing the right one can significantly speed up your design iteration cycle.  As always, the speed, cost, quality decision is at play and at You3Dit, in absence of better guidance, we assume our clients need parts delivered as quickly as possible to accelerate learnings.  

For example, fused-deposition modeling (FDM) 3D printing (also known as Fused Filament Fabrication, FFF, or more generally, Extrusion) works well with materials like PLA, PETG, and ASA — great for quickly testing form, fit, and basic function. If your final part will be made from one of these polymers, then your prototyping and production methods are the same; dramatically accelerating your hardware product development.  HP's multi-jet fusion (MJF) process--a subset of powder-bed fusion additive manufacturing--is a powerful prototyping method as it has high throughput, relatively high quality (for AM processes) and can be cost effective at modest quantities ~50K parts. 

If however, your prototyping methodology and material is not aligned with your production process, useful learnings can still exist so long as you understand the performance gap between prototype and production methods + materials and build out the industry know how to properly validate production designs w/prototyping methods.

Engineers with this experience shine: they can validate ideas quickly while knowing how prototyping materials might diverge from final production performance.

You3Dit's Material Categories

We group materials into six core categories:

• Plastics

• Metals

• Ceramics

• Composites

• Elastomers

• Organics / Hybrids

For early-stage prototypes, plastics and metals dominate:

• Plastics are most commonly used in additive manufacturing. Most common are: PLA, PETG, ASA and Nylon PA 12, to name a few.

• Metals are commonly processed via CNC machining or bent sheet metal forming.  Most common are: Aluminums and Steels.

• Organics / Hybrids are commonly found in laser / waterjet cutting of acrylics, wood, leather and other atypical materials.

If you’ve got a 3D CAD file, or You3Dit helps you to create one, we can then quickly help you transform your design into a real, testable part — fast.  

Start your project today! https://www.you3dit.com/projects/new