KAST 3d Printer - 12 Times Faster than Any Other 3D Printers - Coming soon!

[Mike]

96 microns is a huge layer height for SLA/DLP. That's where much of the speed is coming from. Most SLA/DLP machines print from 20-50 micron layers (with pro machines going as low as 6 microns). Printing half as many layers means printing twice as fast. Printing 25% as many layers means printing four times faster, and so on.

The FSL3D Pegasus Touch was originally designed to print 50 micron layers when it first launched on Kickstarter at the end of last year. At the time, they were boasting about its speed. They eventually redesigned it to print slower with smaller layers due to an overwhelming number of requests in the campaign's comments. This required a switch to a different laser. It's easy to imagine the Kast printer running into a similar situation. People don't buy SLA/DLP for speed. They buy it for print quality.

Brian, I'm not sure I agree about cured resin being the future of desktop fabrication. I believe it currently has the highest growth potential due to 3D artists finally being turned on to 3D printing and demanding high print quality, but I don't think it will ever become more popular than FDM, because FDM is capable of employing a much wider variety of materials (polycarbonate, nylon, rubber-like, wood/metal/stone composites). SLA/DLP is great for precision items intended for investment casting or for art, but it's not real good at functional everyday products such as smartphone cases, R/C car parts, wooden jewelry boxes, etc...

That being said, cured resin is definitely the way to go if you are a 3D artist, because the detail is superior. I expect this to be locked down until the CubeJet is finally released, at which point artists will have to decide between superior detail and full color sandstone.

[Hugues]

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Brian, I'm not sure I agree about cured resin being the future of desktop fabrication. I believe it currently has the highest growth potential due to 3D artists finally being turned on to 3D printing and demanding high print quality, but I don't think it will ever become more popular than FDM, because FDM is capable of employing a much wider variety of materials (polycarbonate, nylon, rubber-like, wood/metal/stone composites). SLA/DLP is great for precision items intended for investment casting or for art, but it's not real good at functional everyday products such as smartphone cases, R/C car parts, wooden jewelry boxes, etc...
....

Cured resin being the future or not, i don't know, but it's hard to imagine substantial gain in speed and surface smoothness with FDM. Seems we have reached a plateau, at least with the typical extruder. Having to draw a layer line by line is a hard constraint. If you want to reduce the extrusion width to improve smoothness, it takes you so much more time to draw one layer, then you have to produce more layers per inch, again more time So we're talking orders of magnitude slower. I have my FDM printer for over a year now, it can do 100 microns layer, but i never really bother to print at that level because it's so much slower and you still see the layers anyway. So all my parts go out at 200 microns. ANd 100 microns is pretty much the accuracy of most if not all the new FDM printers that were launched in the past year, no substantial improvement on that side.

Printing one layer in one go, whatever the size or complexity of the layer, takes the same time with DLP (or LCD), complexity does not cost. And it can go down in layer thickness low enough for the layers to disappear to the human eye. That seems to have better chance in the future in my opinion. No reason why this would be reserved only to artist. I'm planning to use it on my bike for functional parts, visible on the outside. I'm also thinking of combining FDM and cured resin also in the same part, using FDM inside to save on costs and choice of materials and snapping cured resin covers on the outside.

My two cents only, fwiw, and patiently awaiting my Titan1 to be delivered end of this year, so i maybe biased :-)

[Mike]

Cured resin being the future or not, i don't know, but it's hard to imagine substantial gain in speed and surface smoothness with FDM. Seems we have reached a plateau, at least with the typical extruder. Having to draw a layer line by line is a hard constraint. If you want to reduce the extrusion width to improve smoothness, it takes you so much more time to draw one layer, then you have to produce more layers per inch, again more time So we're talking orders of magnitude slower. I have my FDM printer for over a year now, it can do 100 microns layer, but i never really bother to print at that level because it's so much slower and you still see the layers anyway. So all my parts go out at 200 microns. ANd 100 microns is pretty much the accuracy of most if not all the new FDM printers that were launched in the past year, no substantial improvement on that side.

I think you're right in that we aren't going to see much of an increase in FDM speed. In fact, I don't think we're going to see much of an increase in the speed of any of the current technologies. By definition, additive manufacturing means building an object one layer at a time. The only ways to increase speed are to reduce the number of layers, invent a material which lends itself to faster layer creation, or find a way to create more than one layer at a time.

It's also important to point out the difference between resolution and accuracy. Resolution typically means layer height. Accuracy typically means X/Y variance – how accurately each layer is being laid down on the X and Y planes. With FDM, accuracy is a huge factor. I've seen a personal FDM printer print at 20 microns, but the layers were still plainly visible. I've also seen a Stratasys Mojo print at 178 microns and the layers were barely noticeable. That's how big a difference X/Y variance can make. A Stratasys FDM printer produces objects of such high quality, they can be used as injection molding prototypes. It's still not as good as SLA, which can produce layers that are both invisible and perfectly smooth to touch, but it's much better than personal FDM.

I'm curious, what kind of resin are you going to use for a functional bike part?

[Hugues]

...
I'm curious, what kind of resin are you going to use for a functional bike part?

I'll probably get started with the Industrial blend from these guys:
http://www.funtodo.net/our-3d-resin-properties.html

or this one from Makerjuice:
http://cadprint.ch/index.php/en/onli...g-1l-28-detail

But there are new ones every few months on the market,

I might try to add some carbon micro fibers to see if it helps....

[Mike]

I'll probably get started with the Industrial blend from these guys:
http://www.funtodo.net/our-3d-resin-properties.html

or this one from Makerjuice:
http://cadprint.ch/index.php/en/onli...g-1l-28-detail

But there are new ones every few months on the market,

I might try to add some carbon micro fibers to see if it helps....

When you finally get the printer and start messing with it, please post your progress on this. I'm really curious to see how it goes.

[wpilgrim]

When you finally get the printer and start messing with it, please post your progress on this. I'm really curious to see how it goes.

Agreed, I would like to see your progress in this area as well.

[wpilgrim]

People don't buy SLA/DLP for speed. They buy it for print quality.

THIS!

I am highly intrigued by this campaign but at the end of the day I am looking for much higher resolution than 96 microns. As has been stated DLP/SLA is already much faster than my FDM printer, so I am already happy about speed, I don't need it to be faster, what I need is it to output high resolution. I think I will be holding off on this one (although I am on their mailing list so that I can be notified of its launch)

[AndersonTa]

96 microns is a huge layer height for SLA/DLP. That's where much of the speed is coming from. Most SLA/DLP machines print from 20-50 micron layers (with pro machines going as low as 6 microns). Printing half as many layers means printing twice as fast. Printing 25% as many layers means printing four times faster, and so on.

The FSL3D Pegasus Touch was originally designed to print 50 micron layers when it first launched on Kickstarter at the end of last year. At the time, they were boasting about its speed. They eventually redesigned it to print slower with smaller layers due to an overwhelming number of requests in the campaign's comments. This required a switch to a different laser. It's easy to imagine the Kast printer running into a similar situation. People don't buy SLA/DLP for speed. They buy it for print quality.

Brian, I'm not sure I agree about cured resin being the future of desktop fabrication. I believe it currently has the highest growth potential due to 3D artists finally being turned on to 3D printing and demanding high print quality, but I don't think it will ever become more popular than FDM, because FDM is capable of employing a much wider variety of materials (polycarbonate, nylon, rubber-like, wood/metal/stone composites). SLA/DLP is great for precision items intended for investment casting or for art, but it's not real good at functional everyday products such as smartphone cases, R/C car parts, wooden jewelry boxes, etc...

That being said, cured resin is definitely the way to go if you are a 3D artist, because the detail is superior. I expect this to be locked down until the CubeJet is finally released, at which point artists will have to decide between superior detail and full color sandstone.

96 microns is not the layer height, that is the X/Y resolution. As in the smallest feature possible and in this case the pixel density of the screen itself. This is actually pretty good compared to most other SLA printers that are laser based (lowest claimed x/y resolution being 150 microns, Form1+ is at 300 microns for example). Sure it doesn't beat DLP's at its best, but given the build area with 96 microns x/y res, its a winner.