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  1. #11
    Quote Originally Posted by JRDM View Post
    It seems pretty sketchy when their page doesn't explain what it really is or how it works. It reads like a common marketing ploy of an advance announcement to pump up some hype.

    I know Boyer is in it, I would have hoped that he would be better than that.
    A surprisingly negative approach to something so positive

  2. #12
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    Add truly_bent on Shapeways

    3D Systems PlastiJet Printer?

    Well, this problem has been percolating in the back of me wee brain for a few days now. In my first posting above, i suggested a single sweep of either the X or Y axis (whichever is the narrower) to lay down a layer in the Z plane:
    I'd be looking to simplify this by first handling two axes at a time, either X || Y && Z. That in itself would be an order of magnitude faster.
    Like taskman, i initially thought of a multitude of tiny nozzles pushing out hot plastic. That lead me to the old dot matrix technology and the line printer matrix:



    I was thinking something like this could be adapted, with much hard work, to pushing out hot plastic along an entire row as the horizontal plane was swept. Sounds like you'd end up with a real mess, doesn't it? I thought so, too.

    Okay, so what about something like inkjet printing, where tiny blobs of ink are shot onto a planar surface? Well, it turns out that Xerox is still developing something similar, called solid ink printing. I say 'still developing' because the technology has been around since 1987 or so. You'd have thought the whole world would have dropped it by now, but not Xerox.

    It's about shooting tiny blobs of primary coloured (yellow, magenta, cyan, and black) wax onto a drum, which is transferred onto your paper. What a great idea. Take out the drum, substitute PLA for wax, and you have the makings of a 3D PLAJet printer, or maybe PlastiJet.

    I'm not the first to have thought along those lines though. If you Google "xerox solid ink 3d printer", the first story to come up is: 3D Systems to Acquire a Portion of Xerox's Oregon Based Solid Ink Engineering and Development Teams. They paid 32.6 million dollars for access to Xerox's technology. Imagine that. A 3D PlastiJet printer, which prints a complete Z axis layer in a single pass. The resolution would be ridiculously high and it's in full colour no less!

    Is this old news? I keep thinking i must have missed the announcement already.


    Edit: About a week after posting this, i ran across something called Polyjet printing, which is similar to SLA. This Polyjet process lays down dots of liquid photopolymer which is cured by UV light, almost immediately after being laid down. It looks great, but running at 16 microns (or 0.0006") per layer i expect it takes forever to print a part. I can only assume that these printers are so expensive as to be beyond the means of most consumers. And so, the search goes on.
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    Last edited by truly_bent; 01-31-2015 at 09:05 AM.

  3. #13
    Technician paradiddle65's Avatar
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    So how is FLM different than DLP printing? Wouldn't a high quality projector achieve the same result? A full layer in one image. Tune the power and the resin properties correctly and I bet it could be very fast. Or stitch multiple images together with multiple projectors?

    http://www.prodways.com/en/technolog...ht-technology/

    I have a feeling they're mainly interested in a "melted plastic" type printer as opposed to resin, correct?

  4. #14
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    I like that Prodways technology. Makes sense that they could get great resolution, but at what cost?

    Perhaps they feel that there's some buyer resistance to resin machines. Although i've never worked with one, i tend to think of resin based machines as expensive, having a small work envelope, and messy. Although i could be wrong on all counts, as an average consumer, i would still tend toward the "melted plastics".

    Just speculatin'.

  5. #15
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    Quote Originally Posted by truly_bent View Post
    I like that Prodways technology. Makes sense that they could get great resolution, but at what cost?

    Perhaps they feel that there's some buyer resistance to resin machines. Although i've never worked with one, i tend to think of resin based machines as expensive, having a small work envelope, and messy. Although i could be wrong on all counts, as an average consumer, i would still tend toward the "melted plastics".
    All that is still relatively true. I think you can build decent machine for $1000 USD. Some resins are $60/liter, which is less than a 1kg spool's worth of filament equivalent. The mess is still unaddressed in the inexpensive machines, though there's always going to be some clean-up.

    I have no idea what Adrian, et. al. are really trying to promote. I get the feeling even they don't know, that this is some kind of X-Prize-like thing where they want to offer rewards for figuring out how to make it happen. I question the feasability to make a huge grid of nozzles though, going strictly by their description. Even a long linear row of nozzles for a single sweep per layer seems like asking a lot, and one stuck nozzle means a bad day.

    There are other whole-layer technologies, such as those that layer sheets of cut paper. I don't know if that's desirable. Mcor has one that prints where the edges of the part goes, so you have a multi-color model when it's done. It's hard to say it's full-color because it has a faded look.
    Last edited by JRDM; 01-26-2015 at 04:18 PM.

  6. #16
    Quote Originally Posted by JRDM View Post
    All that is still relatively true. I think you can build decent machine for $1000 USD. Some resins are $60/liter, which is less than a 1kg spool's worth of filament equivalent. The mess is still unaddressed in the inexpensive machines, though there's always going to be some clean-up.

    I have no idea what Adrian, et. al. are really trying to promote. I get the feeling even they don't know, that this is some kind of X-Prize-like thing where they want to offer rewards for figuring out how to make it happen. I question the feasability to make a huge grid of nozzles though, going strictly by their description. Even a long linear row of nozzles for a single sweep per layer seems like asking a lot, and one stuck nozzle means a bad day.

    There are other whole-layer technologies, such as those that layer sheets of cut paper. I don't know if that's desirable. Mcor has one that prints where the edges of the part goes, so you have a multi-color model when it's done. It's hard to say it's full-color because it has a faded look.
    Just to clarify, this Challenge originates from RepRap Central. Adrian Bowyer has not been involved but of course, any input from Adrian and the RepRap Community would be most welcome. We are still formulating the Challenge details, it's going to be open to anyone, Individuals, Teams, Companies around the World and we are looking to challenge the current status quo. If we can revisualise current 3D Printing methods and move to instantaneous layer based 3D Printing it really could result in a very significant step forward. It won't be easy but then real challenges are rarely easy.
    Last edited by RRCTAlK; 01-28-2015 at 03:51 AM.

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