Black 3D-printed lattice bicycle saddle on a dark background

Applications · Consumer goods

Printed products that look and feel finished.

Vapor smoothing gives 3D printed consumer products a smooth, sealed surface, and lets makers tune how it looks and feels: gloss, friction and sealing. Brands use it on musical instruments and heavy-use game parts; Posedla finishes its TPU saddles on AMT PostPro.

Test your parts, free See the case studies

Key applications

Where consumer parts are vapor smoothed.

  • Bicycle saddles

    Custom TPU saddles that face sun, water and grit.

  • Musical instruments

    A flute mouthpiece; vapor smoothing gives it hygiene, sound and finish.

  • Game parts

    Puck tops for a heavy-use digital shuffleboard game.

  • Helmets

    Lattice helmet shells: the matte, grainy print comes out smooth, sealed and dark.

  • Camera housings

    A printed freediving camera frame, sealed so it sheds water instead of soaking it up.

  • Footwear

    TPU lattices for shoes and sports gear: on BASF Ultrasint TPU01, a TPU made for footwear, vapor smoothing cut roughness from 13.42 → 1.18 µm.

Printers and materials

The printers and materials behind these parts.

Print processes

MJF, SLS, SAF and HSS and FDM

Posedla prints its saddles on HP Multi Jet Fusion; Fliphead’s mouthpiece is printed by SLS. PostPro smooths parts from MJF, SLS, SAF, HSS and FDM.

Materials

Which system? Compare all four

Case studies

Two stories from consumer goods.

Each case study is the customer’s published account: the summary here, the full story and the PDF one click away.

  1. Case study 01 / 02
    Flute with the printed mouthpiece in its casePhoto © FLIPHEAD UG

    A mouthpiece that changes how a flute plays

    Fliphead and 1zu1 print a mouthpiece that lets flutists play with a saxophone posture. Vapor smoothing gives it the hygiene, sound and finish the product needs.

    Customer
    Fliphead, with 1zu1 (Prototal Group)
    Process
    3D printed → PostPro vapor smoothing
    Result
    Refined surfaces that look and feel good, better sound, and consistent quality as production scaled
    Published
    Read the case study: A mouthpiece that changes how a flute plays PDF: A mouthpiece that changes how a flute plays (opens in a new tab)

All three consumer case studies in the case-study library

Consumer on video

See it at work

Watch on YouTube: Length 1:35

3D Printed Custom Bike Saddles | Post-Processing | Posedla & AMT PostPro

Watch on YouTube (opens in a new tab)

Next step

See the price. Run the numbers. Hold the part.

Starting prices are public and the cost-per-part math is yours to check, with no email needed for either. The free benchmark puts your own parts, vapor smoothed, in your hands.

  1. 01Quote

    Build your quote

    Pick a system and its options, and send AMT an itemized quotation request. Each system shows its starting price.

    Build your quote

  2. 02ROI

    Calculate your ROI

    Compare your cost per part with manual finishing, using your own labor rate and volumes. Every assumption is editable.

    Calculate ROI

  3. 03Benchmark

    Test your parts, free

    Ship us your parts with a prepaid label. We vapor smooth them and send them back with before-and-after photos and a benchmark report.

    Test your parts, free

    No cost to evaluate · Parts returned · Typical turnaround 2–3 weeks

Prices: starting prices, excluding tax and shipping; everything else is priced in your quotation.

Not sure which system? Help me choose

Questions

Questions, answered.

Can I control how glossy or grippy a vapor-smoothed part is?

Yes. ZiggZagg tailors gloss, friction and sealing behavior by selectively controlling the smoothing process.

Does vapor smoothing work on flexible TPU parts?

Yes. On BASF Ultrasint TPU01 printed on HP MJF, surface roughness fell from 13.42 to 1.18 µm after PostPro vapor smoothing.

Does vapor smoothing make parts weaker?

Not in AMT’s published tests. On voxeljet HSS PA12, elongation at break rose by 38.1% (XY) after vapor smoothing, with dimensional change of 0.4% or less.

Which consumer products are vapor smoothed?

Published examples include a flute-to-saxophone mouthpiece (Fliphead) and heavy-use puck tops for a digital shuffleboard game (MMU and Conductr).

Can I test my own parts before I buy?

Yes. Send a few of your printed parts to AMT’s benchmarking program and they come back vapor smoothed: no cost to evaluate, parts returned, typical turnaround 2–3 weeks.