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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.
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.
Huh? This basically works the same as existing laser-based stereolithography printers (see the FormLabs Form 1), except that this one uses a projector instead of a scanning laser. Basically it cures an entire layer at a time instead of having a laser trace out each layer, resulting in a large speed increase.
(same user, backup account)
Ok, so the solid part is created at the bottom of the vat is what you are implying, not at the top, which is what I originally assumed. I guess that makes more sense, as UV passes through a very thin layer of the resin it gets cured at the very bottom of that liquid resin container, so the model is created at the bottom part of all that liquid, not at the top.
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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.
The breakthrough is that they can project through the liquid and have it cure only at the surface layer.
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.
You are close byt not quite. The breakthrough is explained as follows;
Meanwhile, oxygen prevents this reaction from occurring — so to stop the object from simply hardening and sticking to the floor of the pool, there's a layer of dissolved oxygen there, creating an ultra-thin "dead zone" at the very bottom.
The light is projected through a very thin layer at the bottom without curing. The resin at almost the bottom is cured. The light never reaches the top layer. I you look closely at their graphic you will see the object almost reaches the bottom of the container.
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.
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Or you could read the article to find out the answers to your questions.
Thank you. I just couldn't understand it; although clearly the clues were there and you interpreted them correctly.
So the UV light goes through the bottom window, through the oxygen-rich zone that will not polymerize. When the light gets through that zone, it polymerizes the resin. The polymerized resin must block the light from going deeper into the liquid resin.
If you have a thick part, though, I wonder if this could work? New unpolymerized resin would have to flow into the gap between the hardened part and the window, and this 'dead zone' is only microns thick. Now, I do believe that most 3D printed parts aren't solid blocks; but this could be a limitation.
Still, looks quite cool. I am sure that I'm not alone wanting to build stuff with it!
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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.
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Really? I remember one that shined light on the top of the pool and gradually lowered the object / raised the resin level. I suspect growing the object from the bottom is novel, but I'm not sure. The thing with the oxygen acting as an inhibitor is probably also novel, but I imagine there are other ways to prevent sticking at the interface.... i.e. a water based resin of some sort coupled with a super hydrophobic surface treatment... or something that just erodes a bit but not enough to affect tolerances...
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...
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.