Maker creates a super fast, continuous SLA 3D printer

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This super fast DIY 3D printer may one day take on the likes of Carbon3D.

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Just the other week, Carbon3D unveiled a groundbreaking new 3D printing process, which is being billed as anywhere between 25 and 100 times faster than machines on the market today. Hot on the heels of this big announcement, 3DPrint.com has brought to our attention another super speedy SLA 3D printer. The difference? It stems from the Maker community, more specifically, a University of Buffalo industrial engineering student named Bo Pang.

While it shares a number of features with Carbon3D, one noticeable difference is that the device uses an oxygen-permeable window to create a thin layer of uncured resin between the window and the object.

“This dead zone guarantees the part can grow without stopping, and this is the key to the CLIP process. For our machine, we don’t use that oxygen-permeable window, but we instead use a special membrane to create that thin layer of uncured resin. There are 2 advantages of this special membrane,” Pang explains. “First, this membrane is much less expensive than the oxygen-permeable window, as it only costs about 1/100 of the price of the oxygen-permeable window. Second, this membrane is very easy to mold, meaning we can make this membrane almost any shape we want.”

Despite having a relatively small build volume, the DIY device is capable of printing with an XY axis resolution of 15 microns and a Z-axis resolution of 10 microns. As the Maker showed 3DPrint.com, he was able to create a mini replica of the Eiffel Tower measuring 10mm x 10mm x 20 mm in just over seven minutes, not to mention a larger one (40mm x 40mm x 100mm) in 12 minutes.

Still a work in progress, Pang notes that the SLA 3D printer’s build volume can be expanded with some minor calibration. Intrigued? You can read all about the project on its initial write-up here.