Method of manufacturing a 3D item by means of fused deposition modeling

Abstract

The invention relates to a method of manufacturing a 3D item by means of fused deposition modeling. The method comprises the step of depositing a 3D printable material to form a layer stack of 3D printed material, wherein each layer of the layer stack has a layer height and a layer width. The 3D printable material comprises a thermoplastic polymer and light transmissive particles. The layer stack comprises a plurality of the light transmissive particles, each light transmissive particle having a particle width, being the dimension of the light transmissive particle in a direction parallel to the layer width. For the plurality of light transmissive particles, each ratio of the particle width and the layer width is at least 0.6 so that, in the layer stack, the plurality of light transmissive particles forms a plurality of pinholes delimited by a wall part. When the 3D item is illuminated by a light source, the pinholes create relatively small virtual light sources on the surface of the 3D item, opposite to the surface that is illuminated by the light source, thereby providing a sparkling light effect for an observer looking at the 3D item.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.