3D Printers

Let’s Take a Look at How the $100 Peachy Printer Is Coming Along

As I was writing the article on Dot San’s latest project I ran into a Canadian 3D design and printing firm I had not personally come across before: 3D Phaktory. Today I ran into the latest Peachy Printer update, from another Candadian start-up, and I am getting the serious impression that Canada is becoming a great hub for making. The country has both the resources and the need – few places are more isolated then certain small towns across the great Canadian outdoors – for truly delocalized manufacturing and it is showing.

magnetic damper addon peachy printer

In case you missed it (as I did) when it blew through its $50.000 Kickstarter funding goal last year (reaching an incredible $650.000), the Peachy Printer is a Photolithographic 3D Printer. I guess the relative acronym for this technology – I love acronyms – would be PLG. It was built by Rylan Grayston, a sub-30 year old inventor from the very center of Canada, Yorkton, SK.

It uses resin and a laser like an SLA 3D printer although the way it works is incredible. Through a software developed by Grayston, it uses a computer’s sound card to direct the mirrors that control the laser beam and thus create the X and Y shape of the object. The Z axis is controlled through a very original drip system which causes the level of salt water to rise, thus pushing up the resin. I had  to watch the video a couple of times to partially understand this but it is worth it.

The Peachy Printer $100 beta testing kit (which can be complemented with a few different accessories and even a 3D scanner system for an additional $350), already shipped out to 160 supporters and it is constantly updated by Grayston and his team. The latest hardware update, which beta testers can purchase through a dedicated online store, is a magnetic damper for the galvanometer to further stabilize the prints.

rook Peachy 3D Printer

It took the team quite a long time to develop it to be both functional and easy to add to the printer but it will now allow the prints to be more complex and to be split into up to five islands in the same job. To do this they had to experiment extensively with magnetism, and even ran into many dead ends. The entire process is narrated by the Peachy Printer team members in the recently released video below:

The bottom line is that, to understand and figure out how to overcome the “cancellation effects of the eddy currents”, they ended up building a toy with magnetic damping. Playing around with it proved to be a necessary step just like having fun is probably the best path to original creativity.