Printable View
Does anybody else think it is possible to achieve precision prints with the Peachy Printer. ???
Of my analyses of the way the printer is setup it is a very clever design.
From what I see that this kind of printer is only as powerful as the software that runs it otherwise the hardware is close to perfect and the main key lies with the Z axis drip System.
I wont be surprised that we will be able to see prints as detailed and complex as some of the most expensive 3D printers.
I agree. The hardware looks to be very capable of great precision. However, I don't know what the software will be like, nor does anyone else.
I was thinking that it certainly has the resolution for it. Just look at the Z axis. If you had a print area of 200x200 mm and 20 drops of water is equal to 1 ml, then that is 0.00125 mm accuracy. People freak out about 0.1 mm Z height accuracy, this is 100 times that. Pretty impressive.
I also had some thoughts on the galvanometer setup. It is a Tangent style galvo. That means that 0 degrees and 90 degrees position of the magnet requires the most amount of energy for a given movement. So it isn't linear, but the software can compensate for this. But, the magnet angle could be placed at a 45 degree angle. And the movement could be roughly 25 degrees each way off that starting position. That puts the galvo in the most sensitive and most linear portion of its range.
Another thing I noticed when I began thinking more of how the peachy prints is that the more intricate and complex a layer gets, the resolution must be increased further to compensate for the extra time it takes for the laser to complete it's path. before it begins the next path otherwise there might be gaps in between the layers of cured resin.
So in theory the more complex the print you need to decrease the amounts of drips to compensate for the laser.
that also means you need to calibrate allot by hand to get the right resolution depending on the complexity of the print.
Not sure if this would work or not, but I was considering in the case of a layer which requires a longer build time, that I would use a larger container. The idea being that a bigger container would take a longer time to fill giving the time required to draw a time intensive layer, granted this would increase the overall build time and the amount of resin required but I thought it was a simple solution. Other then this as the others have mentioned here I was gonna have a go at controlling the drip rate to speed up or slow down the transition between layers.
The peachy printer is certainly interesting.
The issues I see for increasing resolution (just guesses) are:
- Even though sound cards have quite high resulution internally the used signal is analog making loss of a good part of that resolution likely.
- I guess focal spots of cheap diode lasers aren't that sharp - a second limiting factor for x,y-resolution. This may worsen a bit for bigger build volumes.
- Even though you can theoretically have ridiculously high z resolution with single drip control, resin viscosity might prevent or slow down the flow of the resin making too thin layers impractical
Beside the resolution the demo part seems to specifically avoid overhangs.
I'm not sure but if the hardened resin has similar density than the liquid resin overhangs shold be no problem - should they?
Still even with the demonstrated resolution lots of useful objects can be made.
I just can't yet believe that optically curable resin can be that cheap.