Inspired by Mcor Technologies’ CEO Dr. Conor MacCormack, in his recent Executive Interview, we decided to kick off the weekend by taking a closer look at the Mcor 3D printing technology and how their 3D printers work. Mcor 3D printers follow the same logic as any other 3D printer – turning 3D designs into physical objects – but what differentiates Mcor from other 3D printers is that their machine is relatively low cost and has the highest colour resolution in the industry. On top of that it is an extremely eco-friendly solution, using standard A4 paper as the raw material.
In the featured video, Mcor’s Chief Marketing Officer Deidre MacCormack demonstrates how the Mcor Iris True Colour 3D Printer operates at SolidWorks World 2013:
Below is the transcript for those unable to view the video:
Hi my name is Deidre MacCormack from Mcor Technologies. Here we are at SolidWorks 2013, and I’m here to explain a little bit about our 3D printer. We are actually launching this machine, the Mcor Iris at the show. This is a full colour 3D printer that operates with regular letter size paper. So obviously the difference is this machine is very inexpensive to run. Its high quality eco-friendly, and its full color. So, I will explain a little bit how the machine works.
You load your paper in here on the left. And the difference about this machine its two-step process. These pages here in the machine have been pre-printed on an absent 2D printer. So you can see that the ink has been applied on the cut lines. So now every pages is pulled in one at the time on to the build plate in the center.
There is a multifunction head at the top. One side actually cuts with a tungsten carbide blade around the 2D profile and then… see now the sheet will be fed in, I’ll explain that in a bit… it’s gonna move up next to secure the bond, and when it comes down, it starts the process. This is actually the cutting process. So there is the tungsten carbide blade in this holder and it sets the correct depth so it cuts through the page, which is about 1 millimeter. That’s the kind of the lurk thickness of the resolution we have achieved: 1.1 millimeter.
On the other side of the multifunction head is the glue up head. It is a little wheel that applies really small droplets of adhesive – a water based adhesive. More on the part that aren’t support material around, so when the part is finished printing, you remove the block of paper, and then you weed away the actual support material and reveal the part.
So each page as you can see, it keeps repeating the process until the full build is complete. Today we are printing – it’s on the screen, If you want to see it – its our sales director Bryan Ferrand, and the actual part that we are printing is at the back, I can show you. So this is the end product. It’s a full colour 3D part. These parts are probably about the quarter of the price they are on alternative colour printers available.
And the ethos of our company is based to provide an accessible 3D printer at low cost, eco-friendly and full colour. So of the parts in this cabinet most are less than ten [US] dollars to print. So they are a fraction of the cost of competitors’ prices. We also sell these products in quite a different way. You can buy this prototype range, but you can also buy a print service planned. So bundled in you acquire the machine and acquire enough material to print for the length of the plan. So you get all blades and glue needs – you acquire the paper yourself – for, lets say, three year period. So what we are really doing here is to give access and ability to everybody to do 3D printing themselves at a low cost way.
