An interesting new company called Orange Maker has emerged out of Thousand Oaks, California and they’ve brought with them a 3D printer that they boast will solve “all current 3D Printing technological issues”. Their machine, the Helios 1, is the first printer in their series that will deal with problems of “poor reliability, slow printing speeds, inadequate build volumes, poor surface finishes, and low resolution”, while still keeping costs at a low level. Those are some pretty bold claims! How does the company plan to do it? By creating a new category of 3D printing.
Orange Maker was originally founded by inventor and 3D artist, Kurt Dudley, and tech entrepreneur, Doug Farber, in 2011. Building their technology and their team over the past three years, the company has developed a patent-pending technology they call “Heliolithography”, a photopolymer-based method for projecting UV light at liquid resin through a “ground-breaking curing process”. It may sound like other light-based 3D printing techniques, like stereolithography, which directs a laser beam at UV-curable resin, and digital light projection, which uses a projector to do the same, but Orange Maker insists that the “Helios One™ achieves a new pinnacle of resolution and quality, greatly exceeding the output of high resolution Stereolithography (SL).”
The announcement is an impressive one, but we’ll have to wait to hear more from the company, including specs about the Helios One and more details about how the heliolithography process works. We’ve been burned by other 3D printer manufacturers in the past, when it comes to groundbreaking news. BotObjects for instance teased the public for some time about its multicolor FDM 3D printer and, even after several videos displaying the color-melting extruder printing objects. Needless to say, I’m approaching this story with cautious optimism.
I am optimistic, though! As a sucker for names that may hint at an underlying logic and significance in the Universe, the prefix “helio” holds a special place in my heart. Associated with Helios, the Greek god of the Sun, there’s an implication of an organic “reaching upwards” when used as a prefix. For instance, in English, the name for the heliotrope plant means “to turn towards the Sun.” So, with that in mind, let’s all hope that the Helios One has the ability to direct us all ever upwards! Because, if it doesn’t, we’ll all be sorely disappointed and have to return to our endless search for meaning.
I guess until they provide at least some information about the processs, the output and some photos of what they’ve printed, I would log this as vapourware.
i’ve worked with these guys and they are not only great to work with but brought some creative and helpful insight to the table.
My guess: It’s a Vat Photopolymerization process where the twist action pulls the print off the exposure surface.
Not quite enough to label it an entirely new process, amiright?
Agreed, it seems to be an improvement. Perhaps a big one.
As I’m working on an entirely new process for the past 2 years, I wonder when is the right time to go out of the bush and expose the innovations. Any clue ?
Seems like some pretty creative and revolutionary thought processes at work here. I’d like to see some more details on how exactly it works, maybe a prototype…..but all in all they have some exciting potential.
Patent pending, that’s awesome news! I love how companies innovate in traditional business models, very revolutionary, marvellous! I dare you all to stay close to yourself with of course with lots of investments and corporate money. Hooray for hopeful new technologie!
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not revolutionary one bit. the concept of spiral growth printing was presented at the Solid Free form fabrication symposium at the university of Texas Austin about 5-years ago by a UK researcher called Carl Hauser. I remember his presentation to this day, as the mathematics were stunning in terms of layer image correction to allow for issues such as distortion and dissimilar speeds at the inner and outer edges of the build plane, I also remember that he had a killer hang over due to a night on sixth street the night before.
Carl has a number of patents on spiral growth printing, which layout the concept very nicely,
there is also the commercial system available from the great guys at Lithoz in Austria, which uses a continuous spiral build process to make ceramic loaded photolithography parts.
so, not only is there no evidence that the proposed process works, or even exists, but there is even less evidence that it is revolutionary. yet more bandwagon jumping.