Laminated Object Manufacturing is a 3D printing method, developed by Helisys Inc (now Cubic Technologies). but what happens during this process? Layers of material, plastic or layers paper are fused, or laminated, together, using heat and pressure.
You may have never heard of this 3D printing technology before and that is normal. Even though this technique is efficient, affordable and quite fast, it is still not really popular.
In the LOM technology, the layered material is rolled on the building platform. Usually, the material is coated with an adhesive layer and the feeding roller heats in order to melt the adhesive. The layer is then glued to the previous one. A blade or a laser is used to draw the geometry of the object to build and draw crosses on the rest of the surface to facilitate the extraction of the final objects. At the end, the building platform contains a block composed of the final objects and the parallelepipoids that are to be withdrawn.
Objects printed using paper then taking on wood-like properties, and can benefit from a sand casting finish, while paper objects are usually sealed with a paint or lacquer to keep out moisture.
The technology has been brought to the public by Cubic Technologies (formerly Helisys inc.) that propose a plastic LOM machine. Recently, MCor launched their paper-based machine adding color to the technology.