New Resin Printing Method Creates Objects In Seconds

For anyone looking to buy a 3D printer at home, the first major decision that needs to be made is whether to get a resin printer or a filament printer. Resin has the benefits of finer detail, but filament printers are typically able to produce stronger prints. Within those two main camps are various different types and sizes to choose from, but thanks to some researchers at Switzerland’s École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) there’s a new type of resin printer on the horizon that can produce prints nearly instantaneously.

The method works similarly to existing resin printers by shining a specific light pattern on the resin in order to harden it. The main difference is that the resin is initially placed in a cylinder and spun at a high speed, and the light is shined on the resin at different angles with very precise intensities and timings in order to harden the resin in specific areas. This high-speed method allows the printer to produce prints in record-breaking time. The only current downside, besides the high price for the prototype printer, is that it’s currently limited to small prints.

With the ability to scale in the future and the trend of most new technologies to come down in price after they have been on the market for some amount of time, it would be groundbreaking to be able to produce prints with this type of speed if printers like these can be scalable. Especially if they end up matching the size and scale of homemade printers like this resin printer.

Thanks to [suicidal.banana] for the tip!

20 thoughts on “New Resin Printing Method Creates Objects In Seconds

    1. They have some Yoda figurine at the provided link that’s pretty good, i think the picture used in the article (showing the differences between resins?) just shows some kind of test shape less common compared to the usual benchy etc.

      Also, to be fair, if its gonna print in a few seconds that might be an okay trade-off for less quality (but honestly, looking at that Yoda picture, its really not bad)

  1. Note that the novelty in this particular paper is not the tomographic resin printing technique as suggested by the article, because that has been done before (and in better quality). The novelty is that they improved print quality in scattering (i.e. milky / cloudy) resins by doing some fancy preprocessing.

    1. I take it the two milky / scattering type prints are samples without (center) and with (right) scattering taken into account? If so, that’s a pretty significant improvement.

    2. Yeah, I’d say this article is burying the lede except it doesn’t actually mention the reason for the paper at all. Their new technique now allows volumetric 3D printing with opaque resins in addition to clear ones. This is an improvement to the high-speed printing method invented by the same group five years ago in 2017.

    1. Seems like past tense. Unless there was camping involved and you passed tents.

      You can use shined as past tense too though like “He shined on the mountain for 20 years until he outshone an ATF agent in a draw down and was arrested for attempted murder.”

    2. The rule:
      If it shines something, use shined : “the caterer shined the silver”.
      If it just shines, use shone : “the stars shone dimly”

      (Strangely enough, I’ve never met an anglo who knows his grammar. For a long time I thought there were none…)

  2. Everybody who has seen CT images, knows,that this isn’t going to work very well because of artifacts, i.e. try to get a thin hole into the radius of a large cylinder without the resin still being exposed enough to harden. The technique isn’t new, either. It has been tried before, it’s stupid and it will never be able to produce high quality prints. Also, it has huge issues regarding heat dissipation in the resin. And – the icing on the maneure cake: all the resin in the cylinder is trash after one or a few prints because it’s always exposed as well. I don’t know why people keep reinventing the wheel.

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