We aren’t sure what made him think of it, but [Proper Printing] decided to make an FDM printer lay down resin instead of filament. Why? We still aren’t sure, but we admire the effort nonetheless. In principle, extruding resin shouldn’t be much different than other liquid things you print like icing or concrete. Then you’d need to UV-cure the viscous liquid quickly. In fact, they wound up making up a paste-like resin using several chemicals and a filler.
Armed with the paste, it would seem like the big obstacles would be over. Instead of part cooling fans, the printer now has two laser heads focused on the print area. Printing in vase mode avoids some problems, but the first few attempts were not very successful.
With a bit of perseverance, the setup did work — for a while. More fine tuning got acceptable results. However, he eventually changed the filler material and got a passable Benchy to print. Nothing to be proud of, but recognizable. Honestly, we were surprised that the laser’s didn’t cure the material still inside the nozzle and cause terrible clogs.
Why put this much effort into doing this? We have no idea. Should you try it? Probably not. Of course, being able to print a paste has its own value. Perhaps delivering glue or solder paste, for example. But you generally won’t need to make tall prints with that kind of material. Then again, we’ve never been opposed to doing something “just because.”
After all, why make a musical instrument out of a Game Boy? Why make a modem with tin cans? You might as well extrude resin.
I mean, the reason he is doing it is right there in the video, this is a step towards continuous fiber printing.
I mean it’s a neat setup for home all, but Massivit already does something similar.
https://youtu.be/8KB6adT3VR0
“Why? We still aren’t sure,”
Is it possible that with enough exposure there is something addictive in those fumes?
Why? Why not? I like to think of it as the spirit of inventing things. So try something ‘different’/’off the wall’… Never know what may come of it. So in that sense, go for it! One never knows until you try :) .
I know this idea has occurred to me in the past. Overhangs would be nigh impossible but I’d guess layer adhesion is much better. Having said that I know I’ve seen this at least mentioned here before. IIRC a former successful Kickstarter was looking into this but nothing came of it. They were using their delta platform that had previously been released as an FDM printer plus CNC router plus ??? The machine was intended to be a PCB bot. I can’t recall the name though.
They are 3D printing houses with cement so why not
I thought oxygen impeded the curing of these types of resins (maybe not all of them?) Perhaps an inert atmosphere (CO2? N?) inside the printer would help.
The oxygen inhibition happens only on the outer surface. And it is not permanent. So I guess the prints can be sticky after printing, but it shouldn’t affect layer adhesion. Surface stickiness fades away with washing.
IIRC it can be overcome with enough UV power.
Do you have a source for that? I would like to learn more. So far, every paper I read never mentioned that enough exposure overcomes this issue.
Company that has a lot of patents in this exact area is currently suing Markforged for patent infringement.
So…keep that in mind.
The difference here is this is not exactly the same as their patents. Though I agree companies like to think their patents cover any possible new way of doing something vs a specific way. Part of the reason big companies haven’t tried to push out all the other 3d printer groups is open source. They may have a lock on the big fabs but open source ruins their monopoly.
he is using existing open source to produce this so I suspect he is fine. Also since his quality is less than amazing I suspect they wouldn’t be interested till he can make quality parts that compare with existing resin printers.
Thanks for spreading the word on our patents! Upgrading these instances of “patent infringement”s into “willful patent infringement” with help from good citizens like yourself gets us a bigger payout at court!
Just warning people before their suggestions for improvement become part of their patent portfolio. No need to do the work for them.
Pointing out prior art is a good thing in any situation. Besides…not like it isn’t very close to infringing on Polyjet tech.
https://3dprintingindustry.com/news/markforged-challenges-continuous-composites-3d-printing-patent-lawsuit-210143/
why is he extruding directly into the part? I feel like extruding the resin onto an intermediary platform with a standard msla panel built in is most of the way to a homebuilt vlm multimaterial printer, and would certainly net you better print quality.
Idunno… one of my ongoing projects is a homebuilt VLM inspired multimaterial printer and this looks… quite a way off. However, for the goal of adding continuous fibre into the part, it looks much closer; I just plan to cure the resin extrusion after the entire layer of continuous fibre is laid down instead of near-instantly.
It’s sort of how the Objet printers work – they inkjet out some sizzurp and immediately chase it with some mercury arc lamp goodness. It’s a maintenance nightmare, and you never dare to shut the machines down, lest they never start again.
Depending on the setting speed of the resin, one could use a narrow quartz tube, drawn to a fin point, as the extruder tip and initialize the setting of the resin just prior to it reaching the tip and the build-surface.
This idea is brilliant, and if perfected would probably be more energy efficient, amongst other benefits.
Why it should be more energy efficient? You have a lot of movement, overpowered lasers where most of their power goes wasted. Also the whole process takes longer compared to standard resin printers.
10″ DLP printer consumes about 10-15W at peak, I guess 7W average. LCD around 60-75W peak and about 20W average (the average is lower as the light source is on only about 20% of the print time).
Wrong comparison.
It’s a great idea, it’s already been done commercially. Massiveit uses a FDM with a UV curable gel to do this exact thing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3CY3P28qyQ
What about soldering with this setup?
I think combining this with a 4-axis tilted head (like this: https://youtu.be/7LRWuccMGjc) could make it easier to ensure the inner walls get plenty of exposure to a curing light, as well as making it possible to print overhangs. The future is closer each time something like this is dreamt up and produced!
When I saw printing with resin, I was thinking cannabis resin…
Not new all together but cool how he did it. This is almost exactly how Massivit printers work:
https://lp.massivit3d.com
I just stumble on this on my news feed don’t know why… but… really?
This era of youtubers and influencers is very positive but please guys… please… just search for real and confirmed research and technology on reliable sources when announcing new tech or approaches… this was experimented for many research centres 10/15 years ago and for instance currently is being done by Massiveit.
In fact, there is already such a type of printing on the market. The massivit printer works that way, it uses a polymer gel that, when it reaches the nozzle, a laser solidifies the gel
It occurs to me that it might help to shield the nozzle itself from the UV. Might stop resin curing onto the nozzle!