someone should do a post on the different types of resin available. show cost and usefulness. maybe make some diy equivalent stuff.

This is excellent.

My chemistry is weak, but I agree with dude. We need to reverse engineer some of these materials so that we can get the prices down. Those of you who want to research this should examine any of the epoxies, coatings and inks which are advertised as being cationic. You know, as in the majority of modern special adhesives. Look for “Cationic polymerization”.

You can buy specific UV cure stuff from everyone, ie LOCTITE 3335/3340 at $300+ for 250 ml or it’s cheaper chinese (causes cancer in bystanders within a 5 mile radius) equivalents. Look into the inks used by large format printers used for outdoor advertising. I think Gerber makes these, but any UV cure ink is a start. Same for UV cure varnishes in the printing industry.

Although UV cure reactions are pretty well documented (it’s like 50 years old), hardening by using visible light is a little more difficult.

If you can hit a DLP projector with UV, you can use almost anything you can get your hands on.
I would predict that the DLP portion should be considered a consumable, the same way we would consider an inkjet printer cartridge.

Basically, anything which hardens or undergoes a stable polymer reaction can be used. If you can handle the fumes (nasty, nasty fumes) you can use various super glues. If you can provide vacuum and temperature control, you can use almost any ink.

Also, I wouldn’t get hung up on positive processes – at larger sizes and lower resolutions, negative reactions should be possible. In addition, you should carefully look at old school PCB manufacturing processes – remember chemical application of photo-resists? It’s the same process. In practice, it would be fairly slow.

If you want to formulate something, a co-initiator might be helpful – you start with something which is light activated, then dope it with other chemicals to alter the reaction to meet your needs. I am not a chemist, but again look for “UV sensitizer” and photo-sensitizers for help.

I suspect that bulk 3D printing fluid is already available at any hardware store in the form of some transparent epoxy based paint or varnish…. if you can find something which is not a fast acting self-solvent and can be thinned while retaining these properties.

One way around the self-solvent issue is to use a film of material on top of a neutral-transport with higher specific gravity/weight/density than the uncured material. Maybe that’s too much physics, but you can use liquid carriers in certain instances rather than building extensive support structure. YMMV.

This calls for rather old-fashioned science of the “I got 99 coatings but pitch ain’t one” type pioneered by the lost souls who worked for old T.A.Edison. Good luck!

Aren’t many dental resins UV-activated? I’m not sure of any transparent ones, though, and they’re usually pretty viscous, but it would be a good starting point for experiments with dilution (or a spreader bar).

The catch is that most of the suitable compounds are already marked up at high margins. For people who want to see the process explained:

http://www.lintec-usa.com/Contents/Products/Tape/UVad.htm

@Mr. Hacker
Very true. BTW, HP toner on their newer printers is slowly approaching the cost effectiveness of ink. Just read a report where actual printer cartridge life for newer HP printers is ~60% or less of the stated number of pages.

heh.
i have a couple of broken DLP projectors here which have power supply problems.
i think one is a toshiba, and the input circuitry isnt that complicated on the PSU side so if i can locate a schematic or pinout it shouldn’t be too difficult to kludge something.
(did this once with a 28″ LCD panel, 9 different SMPSs later and I got a picture!)

Promising!
http://www.solarez.com/index.html
http://www.solarez.com/productsnew/photo_i.html

Pretty cheap in comparison.