Vapor smoothing works at the surface. The vapor condenses on the part’s surface and evens out its peaks and troughs. The finest details of a design live at that same scale, so they are the features worth checking on a test part first: embossed and debossed text, logos, knurling, thin ribs and sharp edges.
What AMT and its customers have published
AMT’s whitepapers report dimensional change of up to 0.4% after smoothing (HSS PA12 and SLS PA2200; see Will vapor smoothing change my part’s dimensions?). One production customer described it like this:
Vapor smoothing is well received at our customers because of surface quality and benefits like enhanced strength, easier cleaning and no effect on detail resolution or dimensional accuracy, and the process runs several times a day contributing to our success.
Markus Schrittwieser, 1zu1 Prototypen
Practical tips
- Put your smallest feature on a test part. A coupon with your smallest text, thinnest rib and sharpest edge answers more than any rule of thumb.
- Size text for the finish you want. Text that is just legible as printed is the text to test.
- Decide on edges. If an edge must stay crisp, say so when you send parts for a benchmark.
Over to you: what is the smallest text or feature you have smoothed and been happy with? Please post photos with the material, the printer and the machine.
Sources
- Vapor smoothing: SF and X-series family page and SFX, SF2X, SF50, SF100 product pages. AMT, page read Oct 6, 2026
- Customer spotlights on AMT industry pages (1zu1 Prototypen, automotive; ZiggZagg, consumer). AMT, page read Oct 6, 2026
- Vapor smoothing voxeljet’s HSS PA12 with AMT PostPro (whitepaper). AMT, Feb 6, 2024
- Performance improvements of vapor smoothed SLS PA2200 parts (whitepaper). AMT, Jan 8, 2024