Homemade High Resolution 3D Printer
High resolution print of Venus' head
There are a surprising number of DIY 3D printer projects out there that have nothing to do with MakerBot or RepRap developments. The coolest one I’ve seen in months is Junior Veloso‘s DIY homemade high resolution 3D printer. Junior’s system builds the object upside down by projecting light from a DLP projector into a thin layer of UV resin. Each layer takes about 8 seconds to cure and the layers are about 0.1 mm thick.1 Between the high resolution from the DLP projector and the 0.1 mm vertical layer thickness, Junior is able to get some pretty incredible results as you can see above.
Building upside down
High resolution is obviously one of the biggest benefits to Junior’s system. With thin Z layers and a super high resolution DLP is what makes the high resolution possible. With a cure time of about 8 seconds per layer, even the largest layer is going to be cured far faster than a layer of plastic put down by a Cupcake.
This system isn’t without it’s downsides, however. First, the UV resin comes to about $90 per pound – significantly higher than the cost of ABS. Secondly, the amount of time it takes to put down a layer depends entirely upon the area being placed – which means some layers could be faster than 8 seconds.2
- Which is about 1/3 the typical vertical resolution of a MakerBot Cupcake. That is, unless you’re talking to Dave Durant. [↩]
- There aren’t many paths that would take less than 8 seconds. [↩]
| Tagged with | dlp, junior | 13 comments |
13 Comments so far
Dave Durant
I’ve been watching the news on this for the last few days and am not sure I understand how this thing works.. It looks cool but.. huh?
Sorta seems like it has, bottom to top: the projector, a transparent reservoir full of magic goo, the downward-facing build platform. Looks like it drops the build platform so that it’s just a hair above the very bottom of the pool, fires the DLP projector for however long is needed to solidify the goo, raise Z up enough to detach from the bottom of the pool and let more goo flow in then drop Z back down for the next layer.
I think. Maybe. I’d sure like to see more videos of this…
Do we know how heavy the resin is? I’m having a hard time picturing the volume of a pound.. I wonder what a, say, solid 50x50x50mm cube would weigh.
MakerBlock
@Dave Durant: I, for one, welcome our new UV resin overlords.
I’ve never seen it in person, but from the various posts on the site, I believe you’ve got assembly idea right. I’m not sure how dense the resin is, but the author mentions in one post that building large things could get fairly expensive pretty quickly.
josh
yes but if precision is key & less moving parts it has 1 axixs up and down.
I agree the goo costs more but it is different than just normal plasic proably specal handleing etc.
Also I imagine it wouldn’t take long for someone with a reprap to make something that can hold a glass bottom and have the extruder head or something in place of it hold a bolt to pick it up.
The pico projector might even be able to be used… so anyone with a reprap or makerbot or thingomatic & pico projector or pico projector holder cyclopse could have most of the stuff to do this…
well skinforge programming experiance to modify the way the makerbot etc works.
Dave Durant
Mmmmm.. Resiny overlords..
Josh, I’d think the software for this sort of printer would be far, FAR easier than on makerbot/reprap – there are no tool paths!
You basically just need a black & white image of the whole layer with the parts you want solid in white. Show that to the goo, move Z around a bit, lather, rinse, repeat. I’m not sure printing like this even needs support structures but if it did, you could probably do them with making parts of the image gray.
And if you had a decent feed system for the goo, you wouldn’t need much more than the volume of the object. No need to fill the whole pool – you just need enough to keep the bottom covered.
benH
This is exciting I could see this as a complement to makerbots or repraps. Makerbot/reprap would be primarily useful in creating structure components for more advanced things while the smooth finish from the uv resin parts would be used for coverings etc…
I wonder if a standard LCD projector could be used. Even a moderate res like 1024×768 shrunk to a 10^2cm area would produce a pretty fine resolution.
Dave Durant
He said that a DLP system was really needed instead of LCD but I’m not sure why. Maybe it puts out more UV or is brighter or is more sharp or something else.. Dunno.
I’ve been thinking a UV laser with some Arduino’ed X/Y control might be an interesting way to go, too. I guess a big part of the trick will be only curing the right depth of plastic.
Brad Ruprecht
Same exact concept as this professional machine that has been on the market for almost 10 years now. http://www.envisiontec.com/index.php?id=33
I work in a lab with almost every RP/3D printer known to man including a RepRap. The UV resin for the SLA process which is very similar to the resin used here is worth it’s weight in gold. It is expensive stuff. I would say out of the range of most DIY 3D Printer folks.
psuedonymous
Two reasons for DLP: Higher UV output (LCDs need UV filters to prevent the LCD degrading, DLPs are almost immune to UV so little filtering is needed), and much higher contrast than LCD (or more importantly, much lower black levels).
Perry Cain (neoteric)
I still dont understand how the object is held in the air. I understand the platform is above the item, but does the cured uv resin stick to the platform? I just dont get it.
Junior Veloso
Hi Guys,
First of all, thank you very much for posting the information and comments about the 3d printer that I am working on… as you can see I already got some great results but still have some room for improvements.
Some comments to help you understand the printer:
1) I am not using UV light and UV resin, but visible light resin (cures with wavelength near UV (400nm)) and special visible light lamp that emits near UV light. the main reason for using these components is cost… they are cheaper than anything in UV. So the technology is not that expensive for the quality.
2) The bottom up process is very good as you don’t need to worry about resin level and quantity as you need on SLA. Also you don’t need a big tank with resin.
I will publish many news soon, have some nice material coming soon.
Cheers,
Junior
tekkie
DLP based SLA is not a new concept, and companies such as Zcorp have already introduced very similar products. I would expect these systems to have substantial IP protection as this technology offers better performance without expensive scanning laser heads which do degrade overtime to the tune of $35K.
With that said, I would be extremely cautious when it comes to building a business model around offering this to hobbyists. IP is out there, and companies will go out of the way to protect their IP.
tekkie
Dave,
In response to your question why DLP is better – it’s quite simple. DLP is a semiconductor device with tiny moving reflecting mirrors. This means you can shine any lite source at these mirrors, and they will reflect that light. This is important to UV or visible light curing resins, since you can optimize your light source to be compatible with the curing wavelength of any given resin.
Jerrett
Check this out. this is definitely the future of DIY 3d printing. Super hi definition. A projector projects a slice at a time into light sensitive resin. Ultra hi def and waaay cheaper to build than a Rep rap. Resin costs more than abs but if we all use it the price will come down.
http://www.miicraft.com/