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CES: Formlabs Co-Founder Describes Their Stereolithographic 3D Printer (Video)
"It uses a totally different process called Stereolithography," says Max Lobovsky, while other low-cost 3D printers use a process called FDM (fused deposition modeling). Max explains the differences between the two processes in the video, but what it comes down to in the real world is that his process can "do features down to 0.3 mm," which, he says, is much finer than you can get with FDM. It also seems that structures made with Stereolithography can be made stronger and can be machined more accurately than those made by the FDM process. So this is another step toward fully-useful home fabrication of... almost anything. So Formlabs and the company's initial product, the Form 1, are interesting. And surely there will be other "consumer" Stereolithography machines in the market before long, and prices for both the machine and the chemicals they use as raw materials will come down. Meanwhile, a company called 3D Systems is suing Formlabs for patent infringement. This isn't a nickel and dime deal; Formlabs raised $2,945,885 through Kickstarter, says TechCrunch in a story about the suit. And since their 3D printer is an order of magnitude less expensive than earlier Stereolithography machines and the company's future looks bright, 3D Systems might be better off taking a stock settlement than going for cash. They've settled with other alleged infringers before, so there's a precedent for that idea. Suit or no suit, Formlabs is going forward, building and shipping 3D printers as fast as they can -- and President Obama mentioned 3D printing in his State of the Union speech last night, which will surely help boost the entire industry, including Formlabs.
The tradeoffs with stereolithography: it requires toxic, expensive, smelly resins and can't do very enclosed spaces because the uncured resin would be trapped. The parts have to be washed - again, smelly/toxic chemicals are involved. The resins also usually have a limited lifespan, with some of them practically melting over time.
By the way: "machining" is not the proper term for anything in the class of Additive Manufacturing, which is what both FDM and stereolithography are.
Please help metamoderate.
As I understand it (this all hit the fan a few weeks ago, not sure why /. thinks it's worth an article right now), the patent expires later this year. Formlabs took money now (or rather a few months ago) for a product that would be delivered after the patent expired. So 3D Systems is suing them for getting the money now, before the patent expires.
In other words, Formlabs is being sued for patent infringement about a product that they haven't actually released yet.
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0.3mm is the dot size (minimum feature size). The equivalent measurement on the Makerbot Replicator 2 is 0.4mm. Both the Form 1 and he Replicator 2 can position the feature more precisely than that, but those measurements are how small the feature can be once positioned. Another relevant measure is the minimum layer thickness; 25 microns for the Form 1, 100 microns for the Replicator 2.
Stereolithography - A 3D printing process that uses a laser to solidify a pattern traced on pool of polymer resin.
Yeah, we've known this since 1990 or so, even from behind the Iron Curtain. This is some pretty old stuff.
Ezekiel 23:20
You do know that even when a decent 3D printer capable of producing anything of any quality comes out, the cost of the material to put into it will be prohibitive to a point where it is cheaper to go to Walmart and have it printed there...
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
It's been over 20 years since I worked in a rapid prototyping shop. That's exactly what we did with most of the models. We made a latex mold and cast parts using various resins, typically polyurethane. The chemicals used in stereolithography, including the cleaning agents, were pretty nasty. I would not want that in my house. The urethane resin had to be degassed and the molds cured under pressure to prevent bubbling as the exothermic reaction took place. The commercial vacuum pumps, degassing chamber, compressors and pressure tanks were pretty expensive. Though that cost was nothing compared to the 3D Systems stereolithography machines. Those were upwards of USD500,000 and about USD80,000/yr in maintenance costs.
the growth in cynicism and rebellion has not been without cause
The problem is it isn't just going to be as easy to melt it down and reuse it. Material going into it has to be "processed" a certain way, its not like your printer is going to have a vat of "stuff" that you can just put old stuff back into.
Also, as with any plastic "stuff", recycled "stuff" isn't as good as the original "stuff", so chances are anything you print will not be readily turned back into raw materials, but will have to propagate down into lesser and lesser quality materials until it ultimately ends up in the landfill, you know, like what happens to ALL currently recycled plastics.
So, yes, the cost will be prohibitive and probably just easier to go to a store and by something.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
If by feature size, one is referring to the nozzle width, than 0.4mm is just the default nozzle supplied by makerbot...I've heard that one can install smaller nozzles if needed...however, it usually doesn't make enough of a difference to be worth the longer print times.
As far as layer height goes, the most common printing resolution for a makerbot replicator 1 is 0.15-0.2mm and I've heard of a few users getting down to 0.05mm - however it usually isn't worthwhile, and 0.1mm is the lowest frequently used - and even 0.1mm is painful printing time wise. Honestly, I'm not sure there is much point in wanting better than 0.1mm as that is already an amazingly good detail level -- even 0.15mm produces great prints and I never see a point to want better.
My understanding about the advantage of the form1 is that printing time is significantly reduced for high resolution prints....whereas with traditional makerbots, the better the resolution the longer the print. Also, the formlabs allows printing of more complex models that a makerbot might have creating reliably. Still, it hardly seems worth the hassle in most cases.
I still see FDM printing as the way to go, the trick is just getting it more reliable with durable printers and at reasonable price while not going proprietery or overcharging for materials. Current makerbots are not really consumer market ready....they require lots of tweaking and maintenance.
"It uses a totally different process called Stereolithography,"
I know all these terms like FDM and stereolithography are new here at Slashdot, but this tech isn't new at all. At my employer, the industrial designers engineers tell me how they replaced their stereolithography machines with FDM machines years ago.
"do features down to 0.3 mm," which, he says, is much finer than you can get with FDM
The Makerbot Replicator I have at home does 0.1mm out of the box. This is typical.
"Stereolithography can be made stronger and can be machined more accurately than those made by the FDM process."
Perhaps the technology has improved. But the whole reason companies replaced the stereolithographic machines with FDM is because of the benefits of using "real plastic." It was stronger and didn't photo-degrade like the resins do.
I am not knocking the Form1: it's a great device. But I caution anyone to treat it like some new big up-and-coming thing.
Thing is, 3D Systems (specifically the companies founder, Chuck Hull), invented stereolithography and they have tons of patents in this area (I'm named as inventor on 22 of them.. I used to work for 3D Systems). So, if Formlabs can get out of this one as it's close to expiration date, there's more pain in the pipeline.
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