I have a 3D printer in house. What is next?

Once you have your 3D printer installed at your facility, you will realize how easy it is to start printing your prototypes. Assuming that you are familiar with modeling 3D parts in a CAD software, the process is very straight forward. The key for printing excellent models is to export a high quality STL file. An STL (Standard Tessellation Language) file is a geometrical description of your model based on triangles.

You will need to find a balance between a high quality description of your part and a file size that your hardware can handle with ease. A poorly defined part will yield a faceted part, as the triangles that describe the model are not enough to provide a smooth surface. Too many triangles will over define the surface of your model, will create a huge file and won’t improve the quality of the part.

Take a look at this link to get detailed instructions on how to create good STL files from most CAD programs:

http://objet.com/3d-printers/software/cad-to-stl