It wasn’t so long ago that 3D printing was a totally foreign concept to the layman, a mechanism so high tech it was reserved for labs, scientists and fancy manufacturers only. Fast forward and 3D printing has become a mainstream practice, a gadget available to anyone wanting to bring their concepts to life. Turning your ideas into tangible items will cost you, though, unless you have your own 3D printer.

Hear us out: now a household item, it's worth asking yourself why you'd live life on paper when you can have a three-dimensional printer at your fingertips. Interested? Enter the world of 3D printing with the powerful SparkMaker Original SLA 3D Printer Starter Bundle.

Bring Your Creations to Life in Seconds

Affordable and easy to use, this 3D printer produces smooth models using SLA and UV LCD resins. It might sound very techie and complicated, but it is really just as easy to use as a normal paper printer. This user-friendly 3D printer supports offline printing; to bring your ideas to life, simply insert your SD card with the pre-loaded design into the machine and hit print – it’s that easy. Within seconds, you’ll see your creation start to form. Keep an eye on the LED indicator light to monitor your project’s progress.

Everything You Need to Print High-Quality Models

The SparkMaker Original SLA 3D Printer prints high-resolution models at 100 XY resolution and up to 20 Z layer thickness. Expect top-quality printings with a 3.9" x 2.2" x 0.5" molding size. SparkMaker uses affordable UV LCD resins in a variety of types. The bundle includes everything you need to get started: along with the printer itself, the bundle comprises two resins – white hard resin (LCD-BW) and fresh hard resin (LCD-BF) – a wrench, power adapter and cable, gauze mask and the handy user manual.

3D Printing for Business or Pleasure

The ultimate tool for sparking creativity and ideation, don't be surprised if your 3D printer takes over your old shopping habits. Instead of buying gifts and novelty items, you can make them yourself. Print out intricate figurines of your favorite characters, produce scaled-down versions of cultural landmarks and more. Or you can opt for more functional items, like a pretty tea light holder, unique hair accessory and even a small lamp or drawer. Plenty more ideas where that came from here.

While it certainly provides loads of entertainment, the 3D printer is more than just a cool tech toy. It’s also incredibly useful, as demonstrated by its role during the start of the COVID-19 crisis. When PPE materials were running short, 3D printers stepped up to help create materials for frontline workers. For example, as Forbes wrote in March, “After seeing the N95 shortage gripping the nation’s healthcare workers, HP Inc. and partners have mobilized to create 3D printed face mask and face shield solutions, plus a few other innovative ideas, to keep people safe during the COVID-19 outbreak.”

Revolutionizing the Manufacturing Industry

It’s clear that 3D printing is changing the manufacturing industry. PCMag underscores this point, noting that, “From a practical standpoint, 3D printing can save money and material versus subtractive techniques, as very little raw material is wasted. And it promises to change the nature of manufacturing, eventually letting consumers download files for printing even complex 3D objects—including, for example, electronics devices—in their own homes.”

Life is better in 3D. Experience the thrill of printing out your own creation while getting familiar with a tool that is already changing a major industry as we know it. Right now, you can get the SparkMaker Original SLA 3D Printer Starter Bundle for $194.95, down 39% from the original MSRP.

Electric Drive Housing

The 3D printing technology they have developed or “additive manufacturing” as they call it, takes the existing electric drive housing and redesigns nearly all of the dimensions including overall shape, weight, and rigidity. The entire process is improved as well. With a normal cast piece of metal, along with its specific blueprints, Porsche will usually have to build a special tool or process for that singular part. With 3D-printing, additional assembly work is eliminated and Porsche claims the part quality is increased dramatically.

How The 3D Printer Works

The printer is basically a big box with computer-controlled software and hardware. The computer guides the printing nozzles in the exact order and physical direction that it needs to complete the part. Porsche’s printers are able to use a special alloy powder that when heated up, becomes a lightweight metal material. The printer goes layer by layer, carefully placing the melting material around in a circular fashion until the part is a whole.

Each layer is melted atop one another. In doing this, the lightweight metal powder instantly bonds to the previous layer creating a virtually natural hunk of metal, except this material is much stronger than a cast piece. Porsche’s engineers have researched certain patterns to use when printing each layer of material in order to make them physically stronger and more resistant to flexing. Porsche claims that the weavings in some of their successful tests were much derived from that of nature - bones and plants were used as references.

The natural bone and plant designs were just used on the inside, however. The outside shell of the housings are designed in a honeycomb design to once again strengthen the parts entirely. Here are some more specifics from Porsche’s release:

“The weight of the housing parts was reduced by approximately 40 percent due to the integration of functions and optimisation of the topology. This represents a weight savings of around ten percent for the entire drive due to the lightweight construction. The stiffness was increased significantly at the same time. Despite a continuous wall thickness of only 1.5 millimetres, the stiffness between the electric motor and the gearbox was increased by 100 percent due to the lattice structures. The honeycomb structure reduces the oscillations of the thin housing walls and thus considerably improves the acoustics of the drive as a whole.”

“The integration of parts made the drive unit more compact, significantly improved the drive package, and reduced the assembly work by around 40 work steps. This is equivalent to reduction in the production time of approximately 20 minutes. An additional benefit: integration of the gearbox heat exchanger with optimized heat transmission improves the cooling of the drive as a whole. This is a basic requirement for further increases in performance.”

Porsche’s media team says that the 3D-printing technology was also tested on combustion engine components. Successful tests with 3D-printed pistons were conducted with the Porsche 911 GT2 RS in its facilities. If Porsche is correct regarding the time-saving and quality-improvement of this new technology, we could see printers like these show up in every major manufacturer in a couple of years. An expensive technology for sure, but with enough time, the rest of the automotive industry may fall in line.

Max Larsen is the Porsche reporter at Torque News. Since he was 15 years old Max was building old cars and selling them for profit, spawning his love for cars. He has been around Porsches his entire life. His grandpa had several 911s and he owned a Porsche 944 when he was younger, which made the auto-shop class cars a lot simpler. Reading old car magazines and seeing press cars at shows gave him the passion to write and pursue the industry. He is currently studying Journalism at Western Washington University and writing for the racing team there locally. Follow Max on Torque News Porsche and on Twitter at @maxlarsencars. Search Torque News Porsche for daily Porsche news coverage by our expert automotive reporters.