Hi Mantra,
i offer T-Glase (the material’s chemical name is PET, PET is the material that coke and water bottles are made out of) which is the most transparent material for FDM machines out there. However because of the way, that FDM machines produce 3d prints the filament is not transparent like glass. You get the best transparency if you print with a low resolution (high layers), but then again you will loose much detail in the print.
SLA prints (when clear resin is used obviously) are also very transparent and do not suffer details for transparency. Because of the price of resin compared to T-Glase usually SLA prints are much more expensive.
I printed a bowl out of T-Glase with one bottom layer and the outer shell out of one continous line, the result is extraordinary clear. You can see objects through the material, however everything is blurred (not even SLA prints would be glass clear) and you can see the lines between the layers on the bowl. This was no problem for me, the opposite was the case, because of the wavy outer surface the bowl got a special “touch” and has a really unique look.
To make it simple :
FDM prints with T-Glase are cheaper, but suffer detail
SLA prints with clear resin are expensive, but combine great detail and transparency.
The choise is yours, if you could post the model that you want to get printed I and others could tell you, if T-Glase would suit your needs or if you have to stick to SLA printing.
If you want more information just answer to this comment or request a quote on my Hub:
https://www.3dhubs.com/siegen/hubs/marius
I also offer other transparent materials like Colorfabb XT and Nylon, but neither of them have the focus in transparency.
XT is another kind of PET (but blended with other chemicals), it is made to be tough and resistant to physical and chemical
effects, XT is not specially made for transparency.
Nylon is milky-transparent, if your model is thick then Nylon will look white-ish, like milk in some way, however for thin parts Nylon is relatively transparent, again the focus is on toughness and physical properties, not on transparency so that’s why i would recommend T-Glase.
The maximum resolution on my printer is 0,02mm layer height (20micron), i have not jet tested T-Glase with so thin layers, but the recommendations from Taulman (the producer of T-Glase) is that thicker layers give more transparency. I could do some testing if you want to find a way of combining detail, price and transparency.
Hope this helps,
Marius
