3D Printing Community in Egypt

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45 Degree Rule
Remember 45 degree rule, overhangs that are greater than 45 degrees will need support material or you need to use clever modeling tricks to get the model to print. Create your own support / bridging objects (cones and other supports) by designing them into your model.

Design To Avoid Using Support Material
Although support algorithms are improving all the time, support material can leave ugly marks on the outside of your prints. Support material can also be time consuming to remove. Design your models so that they are 3D printable with minimal support.

Add Custom Supports
Use “mouse ears”, helper disks and cones designed into your model to help it print without the use of computer generated supports.  Tony Buser’s “Mouse Eared Rocket Fincan” and PrettySmallThings “Windsor Chairs” are excellent example of this design technique. 

Know 3D Printing Limitations in Egypt
Know your model details. Are there tiny towers and small features that are too small to be printed in plastic on a desktop 3D printer? An important, but often overlooked, variable in what 3D printing in Egypt can achieve is thread width.
Thread width is determined by the diameter of printer’s nozzle. Most printers have a 0.4mm or 0.5mm nozzle. Practically, this means that a circle drawn by a 3D printer is always two thread widths deep: 0.8mm thick with a 0.4mm nozzle to 1mm thick for a 0.5mm nozzle. Etba3ly 3D's Only Advice in this matter is that  “The smallest feature you can create is double the thread width.”

Fit Tolerances for Interlocking Parts
For objects with multiple interlocking parts, design in your fit tolerance. Getting tolerances correct can be difficult.  Use a 0.2mm offset for tight fit (press fit parts, connecters) and use a 0.4mm offset for lose fit (hinges, box lids). You will have to test it yourself with your particular model to determine what is the right tolerance for the thing you are creating.

Use Shells Properly
Don’t use additional shells on fine featured models, like small text. It will obscure the detail. 

Optimize for Thread Width
Use thread width to your advantage. If you are making flexible models or need very thin features, design the walls of your model to be one thread width thick. Check out Hultgren’s collection of “Flexible Inspiration” model collection on Thingiverse for more examples on utilizing this technique.

The “Holy Grail”: Print and Place Designs
Print in place designs that contain multiple integrated parts, are the “Holy Grail” of FDM 3D printing at Etba3ly 3D in Egypt. 

The terms Rapid Prototyping and 3d printing are often used along each other. And they have similaritys. For example, both rapid prototyping (RP) and 3D printing technologies build models layer by layer from STL data. But there are still some differences. Etba3ly 3D offers cost-effective prototyping solutions in Egypt (Cairo, Alexandria, Giza, Port Said, Suez, Gharbia, Luxor,  Asyut, Dakahlia, Gharbia, Tanta).

From 3Dprinting.com 

3D printers some times make smaller parts.
A lot of 3D printers in Egypt are limited to making parts that will fit roughly in a cube 20 cm on a side. On the other hand, rapid prototyping machines provide a build chamber at least 60cm  on a side, and some have build chambers approaching 1 m and much larger. Being smaller on the outside means there’s less room to build parts inside of course. A smaller build envelope also means that it’s not possible to make as many parts at the same time, it is not cost effective. That’s lower throughput efficiency than an RP machine, but not usually a concern for the applications 3D printers are intended for. 

3D Printing costs way less
The cost difference per part between 3D printing and rapid prototyping systems can be significant in Egypt. Including material, machine depreciation, system maintenance and labor, a part built using rapid prototyping technology in the middle east can cost nearly twice as much compared to 3D printing. Here at Etba3ly 3D we offer cost effective prototyping solutions through 3D Printing technology in Egypt and all the arab world.


3D printers are cheaper and easier to maintain and feed.
You can expect to spend several hundreds to a few thousand per year to maintain a 3D printer and keep it fed with materials, but it costs several tens of thousands of dollars each year to maintain a rapid prototyping system in Egypt. In some cases you will not be able to get the needed parts. Simply replacing a laser in a stereolithography machine can cost 400,000 EGP, and filling a big vat with photopolymer can easily cost more than 1,000,000 EGP.

Less Material choices for 3D Printers in most cases.
Although the list of materials in 3D printing is growing each month, Most 3D printing services don’t provide the same range of materials as Zortrax. Some classes of materials such as ceramics and metals are not available at all. But it’s possible to make adequately functional parts for many applications, and the materials available are certainly appropriate for concept modeling, a frequent use of 3D printers. At the hobbyist level some thermoplastic extrusion machines are actually capable of using a wide range of plastics and material costs are a lot lower.

3D Printers are less complex, and easier to use
Usually 3d printers require much less or even no training at all in contrast to rapid prototyping machines. It’s possible to be making parts pretty much right out of the box with some professional-level technologies. And the simplicity comes at the price of flexibility. Unlike Rapid Prototyping machines in Egypt, you may not be able to adjust or select many build parameters, or change them on the fly. Also, be forewarned that at the low-cost hobbyist level the equipment is not very “Plug & Play” yet. Some of what you save by buying one of these very low cost machines is likely to be offset by the extra time required to get the equipment running reliably and learning to use it.