This morning I heard from one of our old friends here in Korea that he has a new project coming out very soon…and is pretty excited about it. Some of you may remember David’s story about a Korean maker named Park SeongJin, who went by the name “LabC”. Well, he sent me some info to look over, but wanted to hold the juiciest details a bit close to his chest for the moment, as the group he is working with wants to make a grand splash at next week’s Display Week 2015 show in San Jose, California.
That being said, I will share with you the details I can… and they are rather intriguing. This year, we have all seen a number of advances in the resin printing technology sector. Reductions in cost, increases in speed, print size and so forth and this sounds like it is in that same vein. His team’s new printer is called the “Morpheus” and is an “LCD-based resin printer with a build volume of 33cm (w) x 18cm (L) x 20cm (h).” They also stated that it is “affordable,” although no specific figures were mentioned… yet.
According to LabC, their new high resolution printer uses “a LCD panel as an optical mask.” He also said that, “its process is very similar to typical photo-masking process display manufacturing. Its printing resolution and speed is similar (or higher) to commercial DLP 3D printers. However it is smaller and has less power consumption than others.” To show me what he was talking about, he pointed me to a recent YouTube teaser video his group just uploaded at:
When asked about how the machine works, he explained, “We used a commercial-grade LCD panel (as an optical mask) and an LED module (as the light source) to realize 3d printing. Its resolution would be 25 microns in the vertical, and less than 100 microns horizontal.” He also added that it would be the least expensive resin 3D printer on the market compared with other commercial ones that have similar specifications in resolution, speed, and size. Lastly, and almost as an afterthought he mentioned that, “it uses open-source knowledge to support and inspire other followers.”
That last bit got me. If all this comes to pass, we may be on the verge of seeing a major shift in the resin printer market, which when combined with the other improvements we have seen may finally make resin printing more user friendly and (hopefully) less messy… and a lot less expensive.
