DIY stereolithography 3D Printer
Andy built a 3D stereolithography printer, and provided instructions on how to build your own.
Resin is cured in layers using a UV laser. A linear actuator moves the stage down slightly after each layer is hardend, slowly building the 3D object in layers. Check out a time-laps video below the fold.
Via the contact form.
This entry was posted in how-to and tagged 3D, printer, stereolithography.
Comments
this video shows is better, in real time, but you see more details how it works
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ioiWT4kaVg
There is actually another, way faster way to do this. Instead of UV laser you use a lcd projector (dlp would be even better) so you can display a whole layer at once.
My understanding was you needed the UV laser to get the right wavelength (like 385 nm) and optical power density to cause the resin to catalyze into a plastic. Do they make UV projectors that are as bright as a laser spot, but everywhere in the focal plane at once? Seems like that would take a lot of power.
You do not need UV, you can use resin that cures on normal white light. Also if you use DLP projector you can replace the regular bulb with a UV bulb and use UV curing resin
Check out:
http://3dhomemade.blogspot.com/2011/03/my-first-video.html
https://nano-cemms.illinois.edu/materials/3d_printing_full
One uses DLP projector with UV lamp and other IIRC uses regular light
http://3dhomemade.blogspot.com/2011/03/my-first-video.html looks really amazing, excellent resolution- I can hardly believe it is a DIY project. I did not see many details on that site about how it actually works, though.
It uses DLP projector, not sure about else. In general with DLP you can easily switch the original lamp to a UV lamp and go with any UV curing resin .. the whole point with DLP is that it uses MEMS chip with bunch of mirrors compared to TFT projector that uses crystals to block the light. With DLP you can use any wavelength lamp and it works ..
FWIW, it seems both your projects rely on UV light. The nano-cemms.illinois.edu page says they use a white-light video projector, but they note it works because the projector output still has some UV, and that UV is what enables the polymerization. (It is probably slow, due to low UV levels.)
You do not want too high levels of UV as they penetrate solution too deep then
what about the UV laser source power? should it be 1 m Wat or more ?