Dec.10, 2013

Digital Light Processing (DLP) based 3D printer prints objects with a very fine resolution that surpasses that of typical FDM printers which extrude molten plastic layer by layer. Florida head-quartered startup tangible engineering USA Corporation today is unveiling "Solidator"- a new DLP 3D Desktop Printer built to print large parts quickly, with high resolution and printing-speed.

The new 3D Printer features a huge build area 280x210x200 mm (11.02"x 8,26"x7,87") that is 3-4 times larger than that of most other commercial stereolithography printers. The patent-pending design using DLP technology provides high resolution on a large print bed and allows you to create 3D objects in a fraction of the time.

The new 3D Printer called "Solidator" uses Stereolithography and Projector DLP-Technology to turn liquid plastic (similar to nail polish) into a solid 3D object with just visible light. The 3D object is created layer by layer upside down.

The design is realized in laser-cut steel parts, precision-cut aluminum profiles, linear guides, motors, optics, electronics, acrylics, and a special liquid plastic resin container. Solidator has a built in 3.2" touch screen and supports Wireless LAN, Ethernet and USB keys.

The printer comes with Solidator Studio which includes a GPU-accelerated slicer and automated support generation. The software is tested on and available for Windows XP/7/8.x, Mac OSX and Linux Ubuntu.

According to the company, Solidator is capable of printing features as small as 270 microns (0.0106 inches). It can create a single layer of an object at a 100 micron resolution in just 10 seconds independent of object shape or number of objects placed on the build platform. This way Solidator can create 6 Eiffel Towers at 20 cm height (7.9") in only 5.5 hours, says Tim Fischer, President & CEO of tangible engineering USA Corporation.

tangible engineering has also developed a special liquid plastic resin for Solidator. Resin prices start at $50 USD per liter (excluding shipping) that is much cheaper compared to the current $150+/liter market price. According to the company, you can print approximately 28 Eiffel Towers at 8" (20,3 cm) height each with one liter resin.

The company is launching the product today on Kickstarter, and an assembled Solidator DLP Desktop 3D Printer is priced at $4,950.

 

Posted in 3D Printers

 

 

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Sam wrote at 8/26/2015 6:22:58 PM:

The bottom edges of some of those models are curved up most noticable on the tower feet. This usually only happens on my traditional one when the heatbed isn't working properly not sure why you have those on a resin printer.

burt wrote at 2/21/2015 4:59:22 PM:

Not an incredibly technical person, but I was wondering about if this solidator scans items also, or do I need to buy a scanner and if so which one.

gouda wrote at 12/17/2013 10:43:22 AM:

can you tell what is the difference with prodways (www.prodways.com)

AssidiousBlue wrote at 12/12/2013 11:11:38 AM:

@Genia It is a matter of selecting the deposition method that suits the task. When the software is slicing into boxes, or voxels, you will get "Aliasing" where edges get assigned to be either "in" the box or "out of" the box. A lot of the processing time on graphics cards goes into smoothing that effect. The contrast with FDM is that the feature size of FDM is often very small in the x-y plane. So you can actually draw a curve of smaller ~10 micron boxes (in 400 micron wide streak of plastic) where this unit can make either a 270 micron box - or not. Thing is, one eifel tower in seven parts takes about a week of home FDM printing, and Z-artifacts are more pronounced on FDM printing.

Steve wrote at 12/11/2013 5:44:58 PM:

This is the problem with larger format SLA printers, You need a either a much higher resolution DLP projector, or multiple projectors to achieve a higher pixel-per-mm ratio. The 'standard' right now for a decent SLA is 10 pixels per mm for a build resolution of 100 microns x/y. Depending on the hardware involved, 25 micron Z resolution is also achievable. 270 X/Y and 100 Z is basically on-par with the current generation of FDM machines. The software they developed looks fairly decent.

francesco wrote at 12/11/2013 3:26:07 PM:

yes Genia!..I think that is because they force the resolution for achieve this dimensions!..compared with poor results of fdm or fff to dimension/time/resolution ratio this is good enought!..what scares me is the quality of resins: in eiffel tower prints is visible a shrinkage of the 4 "legs" that produce a distorition of the printed parts. I hope this will be fixed soon!

Genia wrote at 12/11/2013 12:06:03 AM:

Look at this owl at 1:40. It's not quality that i have expected from DLP...

francesco wrote at 12/10/2013 4:29:29 PM:

OMG! This is the printer I always dreamed!



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