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New 3D Printing Process Claimed To Be 25X Faster Than Current Technology
ErnieKey writes: Carbon3D, a startup based in Redwood City, CA. has just announced a new breakthrough 3D printing technology called Continuous Liquid Interface Production technology (CLIP). The process works by using oxygen as an inhibiting agent as a UV light rapidly cures a photosensitive resin (abstract). "Conventional 3D printers usually take several hours to print an object — because with most printing methods, they need to individually treat each new layer of material after it's put down so that the next layer can be put down on top of it. The new method is much faster because it works continually, instead of in layers, eliminating this step. As a result, it works in minutes, rather than hours — 25 to 100 times faster, its creators say, than conventional 3D printing." The company has just emerged from stealth mode and announced that they have raised a staggering $41 million to further develop the process and bring it to market.
Reinvented. With resins. Neat.
And so it begins
Does your cheap plastic 3D printed shit fall apart EVEN FASTER?!!!
I'll wait for a 48x or 52x speed
It's called a "punch press"
Table-ized A.I.
So I wonder how this UV projector doesn't cause solids to form inside the vat if in fact this projector can cause plastic to solidify as it is being removed from the vat with liquid resin. First I thought maybe that would work by combining UV, resin and basically air, but then how does it work for solidifying the resin within somewhat thicker parts of the model, not every part of a model is spider web thin. Looks like it's both plausible and magic at the same time, because as the UV passes through the vat I somehow expect it to turn all of the resin it passes through into a solid mass. Oh well, maybe that's the secret sauce that makes thing thing. Maybe there are separate wavelengths that get combined together just near the surface of the resin and that's where it gets solid?
You can't handle the truth.
Specifically, how is this different from other projector based stereolithography printers such as the muve3d DLP (http://www.muve3d.net/press/)?
The problem with UV sensitive resins is that UV light continues to affect the material even after it's hardened.If you keep it in sunlight it will start to degrade the material and get brittle.
It still prints in layers, it's just printing the entire layer simultaneously, using projected UV light, rather than running a flattened tube of material over the entire surface. It's a pretty cool way to print a small prototype-y model.
I'm curious, would that approach be able to scale to multiple colours? The object is fully suspended within the liquid material whilst printing, so I'm guessing it would have to drain the pool, clean the excess fluid from the in-progress model, refill the pool, re-submerge the model, print a bit, and repeat. Which sounds slow and error-prone.
Also curious, how many other substances are there that have similar properties (that is, they can transition from liquid to solid via radiation exposure).
This seems like laser printing for 3d printing.
If you look at the video you see that the surface layer is not flat but the surface tension of the liquid changes the shape of the surface layer. They must either be able to accurately predict this effect or they need to somehow measure the shape of the surface.
Jan
Did anyone else notice that the last two digits only counted up to 60? They sped the video up to make minutes look like seconds. Sure it is faster than additive printing but 6 minutes 35 seconds to make a small model is much slower than injection molding.
http://thammyvienuytin.net/thu...
Since when is $41M USD a "staggering" sum?
I bet at first they wanted to call it Continuous Liquid Interface Technology (CLIT)
The detail on the electron micrographs at the bottom is really good.
That kind of level of detail fundamentally changes not just how fast you can print (which is just a matter of time), but what you can do with it. Imagine suspeding catalyst particles in the resin and printing fluid channels with incredibly large surface areas. Or other things that require lots of detail.
Changing WHAT you can do is more interesting than how fast you can do it.
I didnt get to see the thing run but he had a couple units and some prints, but I dont think he was getting those kinds of speeds.
Damn I'm tired of being poor. Can never make my ideas reality. What a trap.
The build envelope looks tiny. Let me know when I can make large custom electronics enclosures. And what about reliability and durability of the results? When these things can consistently survive the all-corners, all-edges, all-sides drop test, then I'll be impressed.
The ISS already has a 3D printer right now, which got me thinking, this technology requires gravity, so it won't work in space until we learn to properly generate artificial gravity in space.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain... time... to... die...
The Peachy Printer - http://www.peachyprinter.com/ - is a similar concept, albeit lower resolution, for people who'd like to play around with the idea on a DIY basis.
There are 3d printer systems that cure the whole surface at once called the B9 creator. They use a DLP type projector. So that is not what is new. What is new is that that this system does not require a peel operation. In the B9creator the peel is done by sliding the platform off the newly curred part. In the Form1 the tank is peeled by pulling one side away like opening a hinged door. In this new system no peel the cured material is does not stick to the tank because of the O2 rich zone near the bottom of the tank. As the part is pulled out the next layer cures to the new projected pattern. The secret must be in how they are able to get a stable Oxygen rich zone that is not dispersed by the withdrawal of the newly cured part and does not migrate around which would seem to make the point at which curing occurs unstable.
Jewellers and modellers will love this, getting lost plastic masters that quick will be very handy.
They raised $41m in 2013 when there SLA was new. Now Formlabs, FSL3D and b9Creator all exist for $5000. All 3 of these printers use Oxygen inhibition as stated in this paper with PDMS written in 2011: http://goo.gl/1hBrwp
Anyone else notice Eiffel tower's print railing is missing? Quality isn't there... Slows down on flat surfaces too. Seems print area is tiny...
A DIY hobbyist published an almost identical device using a liquid resin and a scanning laser beam to cure the resin.
The DIY 3D Printer used an ingenious method [which would have been patentable] to keep the resin surface level
within a 1/10 MICRON range using an eye dropper and a wire sensor to dispense 1 drop of resin at a time. Since
each drop is 2mm cubed and the surface of the 3D Printer stage tank is 20 cm x 20 cm, each drop raises the resin
surface by 1/10000 mm.
The resin is ordinary UV cured liquid resin available in Quarts, Gallons and Industrial sizes. The UV laser can be
taken from a BluRay player.
The result is a 3D object that can be colored or transparent and is smooth without needing surface sanding.