Nov 14, 2018 | By Cameron

While Colossus is likely to be the largest 3D printer showing off at Formnext 2018 in Frankfurt, Germany over the next few days, the Nexa3D NXE400 may be the fastest. The NXE400 is an SLA 3D printer designed for ultra-rapid prototyping and part production. SLA (stereolithography) printing is arguably the most precise form of 3D printing, and it happens to be among the fastest as well. So when Avi Reichental, Nexa3D Co-founder and Executive Chairman says “We are thrilled, proud and humbled to be the team that’s breaking the speed, size and cost barriers that constrained our industry’s growth rates for decades. It is a development that’s highly prized by end-users, strategic partners, resellers and investors alike,” he’s not making an understatement.

The Nexa3D NXE400 can print six times faster than other printers in its class at a blazing 1Z centimeter per minute! That means a part that’s a foot tall would take only half an hour to print, no matter its complexity. That’s nearing current TV sci-fi speeds of printing. To explain how they’ve achieved this feat of fastness, a brief primer on how SLA printers function will be helpful. 

There sits a vat of photocurable resin (liquid) with a light projector positioned underneath and aiming upwards at the bottom of the vat, which is clear to allow light from the projector to pass through and hit the resin. A scaffold/bed is lowered into the vat very nearly to the bottom so that when the projector illuminates the first cross-section of the part, the resin cures into a solid onto the scaffold. The scaffold is moved up ever so slightly (~100 microns or less), resin flows between the part and the bottom of the vat, the projector shines the next cross-section, and the process repeats until there’s a shiny new part. You’ve probably already detected some of the factors that limit the speed of SLA printers: the cure time of the resin, the fluidic properties of resin, and the fact that the part has to be peeled off the bottom of the vat after each layer is cured.

To address those issues, Nexa3D developed a proprietary Lubricant Sublayer Photo-curing (LSPc) technology as well as a patented structured light matrix. It took several years of research and trial and error, but their R&D budget finally paid off; on top of the record-breaking speed, the NXE400 also has a build volume of 16 liters, over twice as large as most SLA 3D printers. The NXE400 ($49,950) and the 7-liter NXE200 ($19,950) will both be demonstrated along with automated post-processing units at the XponentialWorks booth, B01 - Hall 3 in the Frankfurt Messe during Formnext.

In order to accelerate the commercialization of the NXE series, Nexa3D has a multi-channel arrangement with XYZprinting, who will manufacture and sell the printers under the XYZ brand. Additionally, BEGO, a leading provider of digital and traditional dental materials, will market and sell a special-purpose dental printer. Nexa3D will develop all the technology for the partnerships and also sell the 3D printers under their brand.

 

 

Posted in 3D Printer

 

 

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3d guy wrote at 11/14/2018 2:40:52 PM:

very cool



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