in situ printing

[Chayat]

I'm not a beta so I cant test this idea but I'd like to just put it out there.

Could you get interesting and useful printing effects by having an object in the print area and have the Juice+saline, the Juline if you will, raise up around the object?

I joked in another thread that you could use the peachy to print bodywork straight onto a chassis if you had a build area big enough, a more practical idea I've had is to print masters for dental appliances. You can have a dental plaster copy of the patent's existing gum and teeth which you place in the build area. The peachy prints teeth in the gaps as the Juline rises. Anywhere where a tooth is not needed will have the dental stone in place and the laser will not touch the resin. Anywhere where you'll want a tooth there will be resin flowing into position and the laser will cure it.

Assuming you could make reasonable estimates for the displacement of the object and the object was not reflective at all I think this would be a really useful application for the peachy.

Also I'm happy to test this out myself should team peachy decide to send me a beta kit...

[nka]

Well, Resine and Saline does not mix. Saline is always on the bottom and Resine on the top (floating).

Also, you need a straight reservoir so the peachy know what level it is. Each drip = raise height.

[Feign]

I was recently thinking about that myself. First you print an object and it's negative (a solid mold of the object that is opened up to let the resin and water into the bottom and out of the top), then place both of them in the tank (The negative is a placeholder so that the z-axis rise remains constant) and recalibrate the z-axis to the new tank cross section. Then print the new portion of the object with a different material on top. That way you don't need to make any kind of estimates on the displacement per layer, it would work with the current software the beta already has.

Alternately, if a real-time water level sensor could be used instead of the drip sensor, then you wouldn't need to make a negative or recalibrate the z-axis at all.

Of course, in either case you'd have to be careful about your base design so that you don't end up with the base object casting shadows on itself from the laser, since that would cause blank spots in the curing. I've been doing some math to figure out a mirror and lens arrangement to work around this and maybe even print under slight overhangs. I'll need a centrifugal casting rig to make a mirror big enough to try it though.

And nice try on getting a free beta kit.

[nka]

If you print a Mold, you can then just place resin in it and then UV blast it. It will cure! Just need something to be sure it dosent stick to the mold.

[Chayat]

I didn't mean for molds.

An example would be printing a hairstyle for a lego minifig. Instead of having to edit your 3d model with the dimentions of the minifig's head you just sit him in the Juline and print around him.

[Feign]

Well, yes, that's what I'm talking about. A negative of an object often can't be used for a mold like NKA is theorizing, since you can't open it up into two parts. It's really more like an extra shell of the object with an inlet at the bottom for water to rise in and an outlet at the top for air to get out. That way the water that is being displaced by the model being printed on is taking up space in the negative instead.

[rylangrayston]

Ive been thinking about this alot too
Its something id like to do with a pro version of the printer, and with a camera watching so that it can do self calibration.
I was thinking we could just add 3 or more sets of galvos so that printing would be faster and we could set things into the print aria and print around them over hangs and all.

I haddent thought of using mirrors ... that is a good idea too!