# 3D Printing > 3D Printers (Hardware) >  Carbon3D Announces Breakthrough CLIP 3D Printing Technology - 100X Faster

## Brian_Krassenstein

Stealth, Redwood City, California Based company Carbon3D has just made a breakthrough announcement.  They have unveiled a 3d printing technology which is called Continuous Liquid Interface Production technology (CLIP).  The process uses both light and oxygen to print an object.  Instead of printing layer by layer the oxygen is used to inhibit the curing of the resin as the light rapidly cures the non oxygenated resin.  The company, which has been funded to the tune of $41 million, claims that this technology can print at rates 25 to 100 times that of traditional SLA 3d printing.  Images and live real-time videos of the printer in action can be found at our article here:  http://3dprint.com/51566/carbon3d-clip-3d-printing

Below is a picture of the Carbon3D printer in action.  What do you guys think?  Could this drastically change the market?

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## truly_bent

Sounds like a game changer alright. Can't say as i understand how it works yet.

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## SouthPaw

This is a quite interesting design. But is limited to a very small build X Y build volume. It take quite expensive and temperamental equipment to create an even layer of oxygen dispersion inside a resin layer. Detailed cleaning of the entire build tank, the O2 feeding system and the ultra sonic system would need to be completed quite often. I dought this system with will have a price tag under $30,000 us

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## cation

Some of the problems with this system are:

 It is limited to photopolymers where polymerization is inhibited by oxygen.
Build speed is limited to photopolymers that don't cure to quickly (do to the exothermic heat produced) or the oxygen permeable barrier will melt.
Limited to smaller XY build areas unless you have a seamless projection system with multiple projectors or steering.

@SouthPaw The oxygen permeates through the bottom of the vat. It's not a complicated system. There are no ultrasonics involved.

Look for oxygen permeable polymer films used in food packaging or contact lenses. This system really isn't new. Let's see how their investors feel in a year or two after the system hits the market.

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## curious aardvark

Very clever. Given the large commercial market for small detailed sla machines. This technology already has a huge potential customer base. 
Nice !

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## Brian_Krassenstein

I just think down the line 5-6 years where this technology has been sped up and scaled.  Can't wait!

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## cation

The tech is not new and the XY can be scaled. The real work is in the materials. This system requires low viscosity photopolymers in addition to oxygen inhibited curing. It will print trinkets faster but don't expect parts with material performance like ABS, Acetals, Nylon etc to come out of it. 

The real trick that they pulled off is getting the $41M in venture. It was done in stealth mode to not alert the public for feedback that they would have received about how it's not novel.

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## richardphat

Good to know it's another printer that works only for specific resins.

And eventually, it nowhere tells you cleaning resin is a total mess and you have to be careful and read the msds....

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## Bassna

> The tech is not new and the XY can be scaled. The real work is in the materials. This system requires low viscosity photopolymers in addition to oxygen inhibited curing. It will print trinkets faster but don't expect parts with material performance like ABS, Acetals, Nylon etc to come out of it. 
> 
> The real trick that they pulled off is getting the $41M in venture. It was done in stealth mode to not alert the public for feedback that they would have received about how it's not novel.


I was thinking about the same thing. $41M funded for this. Whew.

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## JDK3D

> Some of the problems with this system are:
> 
>  It is limited to photopolymers where polymerization is inhibited by oxygen.
> Build speed is limited to photopolymers that don't cure to quickly (do to the exothermic heat produced) or the oxygen permeable barrier will melt.
> Limited to smaller XY build areas unless you have a seamless projection system with multiple projectors or steering.
> 
> @SouthPaw The oxygen permeates through the bottom of the vat. It's not a complicated system. There are no ultrasonics involved.
> 
> Look for oxygen permeable polymer films used in food packaging or contact lenses. This system really isn't new. Let's see how their investors feel in a year or two after the system hits the market.


Material Choice

This is from their website, does it sound like they're covering a wide range of applications with what I'd assume is a diverse variety of build material properties?

"Our process makes it possible to exploit a huge range of materials desired for production-quality parts.

We’re able to draw from the whole polymer family to meet highly specific application requirements. Elastomers, for example, cover a range of needs, from the high elasticity needed for athletic shoes to the strength and temperature resistance needed for automotive parts."

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## richardphat

By diverse, they probably meant proprietary resin, typical comment from the industry..... The fact they are still resin makes it harder for real use and application, unless you do experiment with prototype.
Until then, I call horsecrap in the video. When parts that are still coated with liquid resin, this is where the object looks the best or once post treated.

Further, I'd like to know the ammount of time spent just to wipe off those half-cured resin that are a pain to deal with.

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## All Things 3D

As always, a well written and concise article Brian.  As many of your readers have replied, they are skeptical.  Tune in tomorrow morning as we Brad Hill, Stephen Hernandez, and Brian Martinez along with Chris and myself talk through the hype, find out what the real breakthroughs are.  Check us out at 9:30 a.m. PST: https://plus.google.com/events/ccces...u5roc946jllr10

Mike Balzer
Producer
All Things 3D

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## postmahomeson

> I just think down the line 5-6 years where this technology has been sped up and scaled.  Can't wait!


 " idk until recently how low scale it is yeah they just got to upscale at least a cubic foot (preferably at least 15 inch x 15 inch x 15 inch , add more materials and features ( in a exhaustive list  ) the next thing would be what software compatibility and the unit price of the materials and the price of the machine preferably about $4,000 or less , (if they could do that and get mass production it would give them at least potentially make them on the fortune list, ( it just takes the a treats for the media , commitment and activity  and they would be a classic forever Envision able company ( also it's harder to follow there progress without a stock symbol  just have a Youtube for a head and a mouth like Google ) * trademarks are respected

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## patmat

The speed is nice (enabled by having no need to mechanically rip the print off the window and re-dunk), the fragility of parts is nice (again, from not having to rip each layer off the window), and the XY resolution and size might be addressed with steered lasers instead of a digital projector (or ganged projectors). 
But as with any SLA printer, it still can't print independent parts (like unsupported chain links) that I can do with a polyjet. 

And "continuous"? Um, not really, it's still printing layers... though they might be so thin that they approach "continuous". 

There's potential in this method, but DeSimone goes overboard with the hype, imho torpedoing his credibility. Still, he'll have a nicer retirement than me, so who's right?

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## Brian_Krassenstein

Following Carbon3D's huge announcement last week about their CLIP (Continuous Liquid Interface Production) technology that can achieve unprecedented speeds in production, many questions have arisen. 3DPrint.com reached out to Carbon3D, and their Chief Marketing and Strategy Officer, Rob Schoeben, responded to some of the issues about which inquiring minds would like to know. Schoeben discussed target markets, eventual collaborative effort, and more -- including confirmation of the Terminator influence on the technology. While price, number of 3D printers, and exact timing are still inconclusive, Schoeben did provide some key insights about what we can know right now. Check out what he had to say in the full article: http://3dprint.com/54291/carbon3d-interview-schoeben/

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## Hudson

Has there been any further information on print resolution and whether or not the new machines will have larger build plates for multiple pieces at once?

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## djprinter

> And "continuous"? Um, not really, it's still printing layers... though they might be so thin that they approach "continuous".


I think you're mistaken, the printer use continuous extrusion of the part curing it with a projected image.  Layers as we know them would only be created if the object stopped moving, I don't think it ever does.  Also they may be lerping the g-code layers while projecting, which means you could be getting as much as 120 "layers" per second of data to create the object. 

So if the data is projected at 120hz you're layers on a 5" tall object that prints in just 10 minutes would be as small as just 1.7 microns! That's nearly 100 times the resolution of most printers. Print slower and it gets even smaller than that.

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