Design Guidelines for Additive Manufacturing
Additive manufacturing requires engineers to follow specific guidelines for the successful fabrication of parts. This guide provides key data for five popular 3D printing methods that will help you improve the manufacturability of your designs.
This guide covers these additive manufacturing technologies:
- Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM),
- Selective Laser Sintering (SLS),
- Multi Jet Fusion (MJF),
- Stereolithography (SLA), and
- PolyJet (PJ)
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 Wall Thickness |
 Hole Diameter |
 Clearance for 3D Printed Assemblies |
 Escape Holes |
 Minimum Detail |
 Pin Diameter |
 Z Accuracy |
XY Accuracy |
 Standard Layer Thickness1 |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FDM | 1 mm | 1.6 mm | 0.5 mm | — | 0.5 mm for 0.127 mm Slices | 2 mm | XY Accuracy Plus Additional Tolerance of -0.000/+ Slice Height | +/- 0.127 mm (0.005 in) or +/- 0.002 mm/mm (0.002 in/in) (whichever is greater) | 0.25 mm (.010) 5 |
| SLS | 0.7 mm 4 | 1 mm | 0.5 mm | 5 mm 3 | 0.7 mm 4 | 1 mm | +/- 0.3 mm (.012) or 0.3% (whichever is greater)2 | +/- 0.3 mm (.012) or -0.3% (whichever is greater)2 | 0.12 mm (.005) |
| MJF | 0.7 mm 4 | 1 mm | 0.5 mm | 5 mm 3 | 0.4 mm 4 | 1 mm | +/- 0.5 mm or 0.5% (whichever is greater)2 | +/- 0.3 mm (.012) on XY or =/- 0.3% (whichever is greater)2 | 0.08 mm (.003) |
| SLA | 1 mm | 0.5 mm | 0.5 mm | 5 mm | 0.5 mm | 1 mm | +/- 0.2 mm (0.008) or 0.2% (whichever is greater) | +/- 0.2 mm (0.008) or 0.2% (whichever is greater) | 0.1 mm (.004) |
| PolyJet | 1 mm | 0.5 mm | 0.4 mm | — | 0.4 mm | 1 mm | +/- 0.2 mm (0.008) or 0.002 mm/mm (whichever is greater) | +/- 0.2 mm (0.008) or 0.002 mm/mm (whichever is greater) | 0.03 mm (.001) |
1 Fathom’s standard layer thickness per technology.
2 Values can increase for solid parts with a wall thickness of less than 5 mm.
3 Escape holes for SLS and MJF: At the 5 mm size, powder removal is best effort; larger diameters are needed for total removal.
4 Wall thickness and minimum detail for SLS and MJF: Features under 1 mm are best effort and are considered customer at risk.
5 FDM layer thickness is 0.010 in. for small frame machines and 0.013 in. for large frame machines.
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