After years of work, [Junior Veloso] is finally getting his 3D printer project out to the public. Unlike the Makerbots and repraps we usually see, [Junior]’s printer uses light-curing resin and a DLP projector to build objects with incredibly fine detail.
One highlight of [Junior]’s project is the development of low-cost resins. Normally, light curing resins are extremely expensive, but [Junior] is actively trying to get the price of resin down to $150 USD per kilogram. A quick back-of-the-wolfram calculation tells us you should be able to print about 7-800 cubic centimeters with a kilogram of resin. It’s much more expensive than plastic filament used in other 3D printers, but that’s the price you pay for quality.
There’s a very popular Indiegogo campaign that is trying to raise money to mass produce the resin and some components of this kit. We’re not impressed with the rewards for this campaign – $59 for a .PDF description of the printer without any dimensions, $159 for a BOM, dimensions and the formula to make your own resin, and $400 for the closed-source software [Junior] devleoped – but hopefully this Indiegogo gets cheap resin out onto the market. There’s a short FAQ about this printer, so we’ll leave our readers to tactfully discuss the merits of this printer in the comments below.
You can check out the process of printing a remarkably detailed alien skull in the video after the break.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPmP0u1HuUM&w=470]
funny, I was just thinking yesterday about making a high res 3d plotter using suspended laser printer toner and a cdwriter laser….
This doesn’t change anything… go ahead and DO IT 🙂
Laser printer toner has already been tried for SLS. Its melting temperature isn’t right and it’s too fragile.
I’m wondering if the Toshiba LCD projector I have would work for a project like this?
It’s 1024×768 native resolution. Original cost new in 1998 was $10,000. I picked it up used for $10. Fully functional, excellent picture, no idea how many hours on the bulb but I’ve found new bulbs for under $150.
Very cool stuff!
We sell DLP lamps for only $65.16…
https://www.shopjimmy.com/catalogsearch/result/?q=sj-replacement
Ryan
isn’t it like the third time you post about this printer? if i remember correctly junior had a few problems because he declared his printer as open source but didn’t want to make the detail public or some like that….
in my opinion the guy is out of luck because he is just in between markets he cannot compete with the industial segment and he is WAY to expensive for the hobby market even if his resolution is awesome.
This is (I think) the third time HaD has posted something about this project over the course of 2 years or so.
I completely agree that the rewards are ridiculous. $60 for pictures of what the final project may look like and another hundred on top of that for some dimensions. The $400 software license for slicing .STL files and generating supports is crazy, especially considering one of the open-source projects (slic3r or skeinforge) can be adapted to this task relatively easily.
It was very hard to keep this article at least somewhat positive*, but I think the implied subtext remains. I’m just hoping some builder out there sees the words, “3D printer”, “resin”, and “DLP projector” and heads off to their workshop.
*Yes, HaD actually has some journalistic integrity. We’re surprised as well.
At this point, both Slic3r and Skeinforge know how to slice for DLP printing, and Pronterface knows how to display the slices and move the axis accordingly.
You could have included information about open source efforts in this area. It doesn’t have to be all cheerleading for the main topic.
Think it’s time for an SLA 3D printer roundup post, TM?
Nah wait a month, there will be much more stuff to show on the lemoncurry side, the further along at this point is here .
http://www.flickr.com/photos/arthurwolf/sets/72157629689547231/
Software wise this is much simpler then the extrusion printers. You just need flat “slices” of the print, ready to show with a projector.
And these slices are VERY easy to generate with a 3D video card. Even adding support can be done with some 3D video tricks.
And even without a 3D card it would be pretty easy. Charging 400$ for that is just a money grab.
Me is wondering, why the blue glove if it’s safe according to the webpage? And why the horrible webpage font?
> Me is wondering, why the blue glove if it’s safe according to the webpage?
That’s the hilarious part. He is not selling the resin he used to make those videos and images. He has a new formula(theoretical) that is supposed to be much cheaper than the resin that requires gloves. I recall him stating on an old blog(if it hasn’t been erased) it costs something like $350 / liter for the stuff he used for all his incredible videos.
He talks about the new formula and what he hopes it might cost with a bunch of theoretical properties.
They all need gloves. They are UV curing epoxies, urethanes and polyesters. They can cause sensitization in some people. Some are worse than others, depends on the monomers used mainly. Once they cure, they are fairly inert however but when one is handing raw uncured resin, you should, ideally, use gloves.
I’ve figured out “get a DLP projector and replace the bulb with a UV one”, and “basic lifting mechanism”. For 10 small dollars, I’ll write this down on a bit of paper and mail it to anyone.
Still, making cheap alternatives to expensive equipment is 25% of HAD anyway.
It’s interesting to see he’s developing his own resin. If he can make it well enough, and cheaper than the commercial stuff, he could make his fortune selling that to industry,
Yeah, except that he does not document his resin, and there is already times cheaper resin than his, go ask the lemoncurry people.
Actually, cheap resin ( 40$/L ) is already on the market, and it’s not thanks to the closed source efforts of mister Veloso, but it’s in relation to the openhardware efforts of the reprap community at doing the same : lemoncurry ( https://code.google.com/p/lemoncurry/wiki/main ).
Also, the Veloso stuff is incredibly overpriced, and slow, and his videos misleading. He’s just proffiting from the little advance he has over the openhardware efforts to make a as much cash as he can before the same can be done for a third of the price in a few months.
His campaign is frozen and besides, his prices are absurd. He is also 100% closed source.
There are already open source projects addressing this. Skeinforge has a fork or something that supports these kinds of printers. There is also the very cool looking and open source ChemShapes(http://www.chemshapes.com). Lemon Curry(http://code.google.com/p/lemoncurry/wiki/main) is working on a design with people in the process of building. Optimized DLP projectors are going to be available soon. You can get resins from Bucktown Polymers at much more reasonable prices than $150/liter.
A year ago, Junior Veloso’s stuff was innovative., I think it’s too late for him today.
Thanks a lot for those links, I’ll be sure to keep an eye on them. I’m getting exited just reading about it and itching to build something myself.
Wow… I’m interested in this! Glad i waited.
Really? 599 USD for bullshit software and “controller” board? This guy is running a SCAM
Indeed, $600 for pretty much just the controller board, that is something you can do with an arduino and a pololu stepper driver ( $50 ) is obscene.
The same goes for the $4k full kit, you can do better than his kit for a third of the price and still make a comfortable profit.
This would be vaguely understandable if at least he did invent anything, but he didn’t.
Also, if memory serves, he initially said this would be openhardware, got support and advice because of this, then a year ago dissapeared from the internet, along with any documentation, before coming back now with some blog posts and his indiegogo campain.
I’d really wish there was a better way to warn ppl about the scam than just comments on blog posts.
I wrote a blog post about this the other day. I wasn’t happy with my dealings with Junior and his refusal to post my questions.
http://10rem.net/blog/2012/04/03/the-internet-is-not-a-democracy-or-how-not-to-gain-customer-confidence
Just for some perspective (I am not defending Junior as I don’t know him and have never dealt with him and I haven’t reviewed his offerings indepth yet) – commercial machines like the EnvisionTEC – which is pretty much what this machine can do sells for $40,000. Objets and ProJets sell for $100,000+ although their lower end models sell for about $40,000 last time I checked.
Oh and resins are about $1100 per 3.6 kg.
You can build this (without projector) for under $100. It’s only a projector with a z-axis to control ofcourse. But don’t underestimate the time you have to invest in finetuning.
But then again, this is way overpriced. As alternative take a look at this: http://www.instructables.com/id/Build-a-Laser-3D-Printer-Stereolithography-at-Ho/
I think this guy is onto something more open source. And readily available.
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:19185
i’ll just keep following the lemoncurry guys and scribblej and wait for a resin printer that can be printed in a resin printer. and you can by resin from bucktown polymers for close to the price of pla
I keep seeing prices for UV cured resins purchased in low volume. Higher volume (55 gallon drum) is much much much cheaper. Has anyone tried operating a community distribution system to reduce the prices associated with volume?
I’m thinking something like the guy with the purple PCBs. A group of people place their small PCBs on one large panel to reduce the prices associated with getting a PCB cut.
I purchase UV resin in 55 gallon drums and I can verify that it is SIGNIFICANTLY cheaper that way (imagine that). But developing the formula is complex and time consuming – took me about 6 months of work to develop my own unique formula. Most vendors don’t like to sell small quantities and if they do, they mark it up and don’t ship to residences.
Not to be pedantic, but it’s precision, not accuracy.
Came to say exactly this. Precision vs accuracy is one of those incorrect usages that really bugs me.
I have been looking at this product for experimenting, thought some of you also might like to try some. Seems to be versatile and relatively cheap.
http://www.solarez.com/productsnew/products.html
What about recycling the DLP units from gutted C*s*o projectors which have had the diodes harvested?
Can’t be that hard, and driving the bare chip is feasible if you reverse engineer the pinout.
Or just reuse the whole projector with a kludge to get it to work minus the diode..
$150 per Kg is around what you would pay if you have a commercial machine and buy material from the machine manufacturer.
3rd party suppliers are already cheaper but I guess no suppliers sell to the general public.
So I guess this is a pretty normal business just aimed at a different market than the existing commercial DLP based printers.
I always understood that the cost and availability of the resin was only part of the problem. The other was that the existing commercial machines are protected by patents. This is the reason why nobody else was replicating these pretty simple machines.
Yay for innovastion, right?
/sarcasm
Err innovation.
Don’t worry about this, obviously this guy has skills and is doing awesome work, but there are other promising open projects out there. ScribbleJ is doing one and has been testing resin that is 75% cheaper.
Hi Guys,
What about a UV resin for 7.4 EUR per kg? You have might missed the forum article posted by “Spota” four years ago (March 07, 2008) at
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:3zkZhGpv75AJ:forums.reprap.org/read.php%3F70,10142,11738+What+do+you+need+to+make+UV-curing+resins&cd=2&hl=hu&ct=clnk&gl=hu
(Unfortunately I can not open it recently, so I provided the Google snapshot link for you.)
I copy here the most important info for sure:
* Best results yet! Excellent curing speed, great hardness and toughness:
For 100g of final resin mix (RM)
3g of Benzil
1g of Benzoilisobutylether (BIsoBE)
1g of MDEA
0.5g of EDTA or 0.1g of Hydrochinone
complete to 100g with Polyester resin.
Cost of chemicals: 0.74
Offical identifiers of the materials:
Benzophenone, CAS: 119-61-9 (+/- 44Euro kg)
Benzil, CAS: 134-81-6 (35Euro 500g)
Benzoilisobutylether, CAS: 22499-12-3 (36Euro 100g)
MDEA, CAS: 105-59-9 (31Euro 1kg)
(Thanks Spota)
You can read in the original forum article that the UV resins do not much differ from common resins but there in the later are UV sensitive initiators which are included in very low percentage. In order to make own resin, you can purchase the initiator materials and the bulk part (for example ordenary polyester) from different suppliers. Good luck for you 1- opening the original post, 2- for hunting the materials, and 3- for a try the recipe above :-). (It might be more expensive now, 4 years later, but paying 150$ instead 7.4 EUR for 1 kg resin would be a big mistake.)
Those are actually prices for high quantities, so you can’t really compare them with prices for single liters or kilos of the stuff.
The currently cheaper option is bucktown polymers, at 40$/L, which is about the price of good quality reprap plastics.
That formula is crap. The results are extremely low quality in terms of physical strength.
Which formula, the one above or Bucktown’s
First of all, who ever thinks you can build a reliable printer for 100 bucks is crazy. To get micron precision you need precision parts, not made out of wood. No backlash in your screws. I don’t know what the status is now, but when I called about UV dlp’s it was around 20 grand for a chipset. Maybe regular dlp’s reflect 385nm, I don’t know, and I havn’t seen results.
Both mr Veloso and the opensource alternatives use normal DLP projectors, either just modded to remove the UV filtering parts, or modded to change the mercury lamp with a UV led.
So while DLPs themselves are a tad expensive, they are not a reason to get to multiple thousand prices.
About precision, for X and Y, resolution is defined by the DLPs resolution, so you can get quite high with off the shelf equipment, and about Z resolution, you can also get very high resolution, see for example the reprap prints with 0.01mm layer height, done using normal cheap threaded rod.
So while $100 is a bit too optimistic, there is really nothing intrinsequely very expensive with this technique.
The problem with “cheap threaded rod” is that the the tolerance on the lead (from top of one thread to top of next, for example) can vary quite a bit, which certainly affects the thickness of your layers as you build up in height. I buy threaded rod in my machine shop to modify and make into customer’s parts and you
would not believe the ways “cheap threaded rod” can be out of tolerance. We always have to order more and sort them for the good ones.
@Will I dont think you understand the mechanics, design or how these printers work. It is dead simple. There is only 1 moving axis. Everything else is fixed. With a decent M8(1.25mm) leadscrew and a 1/16 microstepping stepper motor you can get 2560 steps per millimeter. You do the math on how many microns of precision(theoretical) that is for each layer. Even an order of magnitude of error is 3 microns.
Your problem is to construct the linear guide precisely enough that it doesn’t have any sideways clap or other degrees of freedom except up and down.
It’s successfully done to some accuracy or another in every DIY 3d printer and CNC machine out there. This is not something that has to be overcome by spending lots and lots of money.
@TM, don’t offend me.
I understand there are many options for anti-backlash lead screws, and you can compensate for backlash in the software. Go ahead. I prefer ballscrews, servos, and machining all my parts // within .0002″. If I could afford off-the shelf linear servo motors, or had the time to build some I would. I have seen amazing speed/repeatablility/ and resolution in some of my customer’s machines. I have made crap machines too at customer’s request..Never a good idea because un-anticipated problems always occur. As a professional I rarely see leadscrews on precision machinery-but I will double check with the with my partner on what he thinks, he has done more automated metrology stuff. I have had the lead screw/ ballscrew debate before in grad school.
Like I said earlier, when I called TI’s DLP/DMD chipset distributer about what they advertise as UV range reflective-they said $20,000. This was three years ago. I moved on to other projects because I did not know uv-near /UV resin existed and I was a poor grad student, and I was offered more opportunistic research experiences. If off the shelf DMD chips do reflect UV that is awesome- and F TI for telling me different.
Has anyone ever thought of using ultrasonic transducers to assist with vat/part release on larger build areas?
@Will
No one is talking about industrial, commercial or scientific mechanical design. It is not my fault you stepped into a discussion about DIY, self-sourced builds(Yes, even Veloso’s) that really do cost around $100 while you are sitting in the rarefied airs of high end, ultra expensive industrial design.
You might be making space shuttles or aeronautic parts and the machines that make them. We are not.
I understand. Anyone thought of using ultrasonic transducers to vibrate the vat perpendicular to the build plane to assist with part release/ vacuum break on larger build areas?
I haven’t heard of transducers being used yet. The two primary ways people are doing it right now are either tilting the stage at one end or drilling holes in it to shrink the surface area so it can lift away from the bottom directly.
Right now, the machines people are building have pretty small stages(less than 200mm on a side).
I can’t quite put my finger on it, but something about the video immediately makes me think this guy is a jackass. The comments here only seem to confirm my suspicions. 😐
Also, thanks for the link to lemoncurry, I gave up on thinking about this UV-resin 3D printing stuff months ago when I tried to figure out how to get the chemicals…
Good to see there’s still people trying Prometheus the tech down to us mere mortals without access to industrial chemical supplies or university labs… (And doing it in the spirit of the open source community!)
I would really like it if HaD simply skipped any project that wasn’t open. Closed source projects are completely counter to the hacker mindset and the goal of this site.
Even if only part of the project was open, that would at least be reasonable. But a fully closed project, asking for my money? Yeah, how about no.
I think we would either run out of projects or be relegated to irrelevance.
Take that solar-powered 3d sand melting printer from last summer. That was hugely popular (and damn cool in it’s own right), but it was really an art piece. There weren’t diagrams, plans, or schematics; just a link to vimeo. I’m sure we’ll be forced to write something on that Google glass thing sometime this weekend, and that’s not really open, either.
There’s a difference between a closed project and one asking for your money. It was really hard for me to keep this one in a positive light. I’ll keep these comments in mind next time one of these rolls into my inbox.
The solar sand printer is still great because it is, as you have said it, an art installation and a hack. It’s not a commercial project, or even if it is, the commerce is somehow behind the curtain. There are other interesting posts about scientific and engineering research. They are commercial and not open at all, but they inspire, give ideas and they’re fun to watch and read about. Well, they also don’t explicitly ask me to give them my money.
And here we have a case of a really fishy project, with no open details, attempts to coerce the readers into giving away the money in exchange for not sure what and a long history of shady behaviour of the author. I don’t really know how to classify the difference, but somehow it seems to be easy to see that this project differs a lot from what is normally expected from a hackaday article, no? Basically the author does not contribute anything, it’s a commercial project of questionnable nature and not hack like at all. The article therefore is nothing but a commercial ad, no?
@snurfel:
I completely agree. There’s something intangible about this project that puts it outside the realm of the usual builds we see, and even the ones that just kickstarter/indiegogo campaigns.
I totally agree that this printer *isn’t* something that HaD would normally feature, mainly because it doesn’t pass the ‘sniff test’. I wouldn’t exactly call it an advertisement, though. This post was reasonably balanced enough – The quality of the prints is awesome, but $150 for a BOM is a scam – that it’s not an ad. Advertisements don’t call out what their selling with factual information.
So basically, usually HaD posts are about projects that are both awesome and honest, and this one time it’s about a project that is only awesome 🙂
My question is about precision. I can believe the Z-axis precision. But isn’t the whole DLP-projector then limited by the resolution of the image it generates? Wouldn’t that be 1920×1080 at the top-end? So, DLP is superior to extruded until the printed object gets to be 1920 times the resolution of the extruder in the largest dimension?
3D SLA resin is UV opaque so that only the surface the image is projected on gets cured. That means the projection plane is fixed and doesn’t diverge as the Z axis travels. So if your print volume cross section is 100mm wide, each voxel will be .052mm wide at every layer. Pretty good considering the smallest x-y plane feature size in a FDM print is limited by the extrusion width.
That does imply that the the finest resolution is 1/1920 the build envelope’s larger axis (given at-least a 16×9 ratio build envelope.)
So, this technique works well up until the minimum extruded width is 1/1920 of the build envelope. At that point, an extrusion system is superior?
Re. mechanics.
Recycle 4 defunct optical blocks from broken (identical) DVD or CD drives.
Then use one on each corner to move the workpiece.
Have an accelerometer to detect misalignment and correct via microstepping before doing the next layer.
Even better, only a single driver is needed as you simply distribute the current between four motors and have an inhibit line in case one is wrong.
Ought to work, maybe someone can try this?
Re. UV lamps.
385nm isn’t hard, just use a surplus BLB tube in a reflector.
Pass light through projector lens set to align it, and then calibrate using decanned broken UV burner diode as a detector.
Why shouldn’t he recoup the money he has invested? Why should one not profit from ones work?
The price is not bad. At almost $1800 for a makerbot I would rather invest in a unit like this than the makerbot had I a need for a 3d printer.
Personally I couldn’t care less about open source. There have been hackers long before the open source movement. Hacking is taking an existing device or software and making it do what you want it to. Hacking is not getting a free copy of someone else’s work.
> Why shouldn’t he recoup the money he has invested?
I really don’t see what kind of money he invested in this. The printer he has built, the resin he made, is not that much. Not any more than what the openhardware guys are investing.
I bet he put a lot of time into the software, but if the reprap community comes up with something usable in a ŵeek, then I’m not really sure whatever he coded is worth giving him 300% profit over the hardware he sells, especially with the opensource community catching up fast on both hardware and software, and much cheaper alternatives being in the works for hardware.
Do you think he just found the right recipe for the resin the first try? Resin and it’s components are not cheap.
Open source software tends to be worth what you pay for it.
>>Open source software tends to be worth what you pay for it.<<
Wait..what? Not sure if trolling or just … has never used any of the software people are talking about here.
There is a LOT of very good OSS out there, especially in the hobby space. If you haven't tried it, you're really missing out.
Also, he could have spent millions develloping his resin, it does not necessarily say about the cost of doing so, but maybe says about his capacity to waste money …
Others have made much cheaper better resins already, which seems to show he just wasted his time. Too bad for him.
Also, look around the interwebs, there are formulas available over there, so I’m not sure he went at this completely blind.
Total troll 🙂
It just boils down to the projector optics and the DLP mirrors that is used in the video projector. To get short projection length you have to move the projection lens forward which means you lose some of the light and pixels unless you change the collimator beam. With a 1024 X 768 pixels with a 4:3 aspect ratio and a 8″ diagonal. One would have a pixel resolution of .16mm in both X and Y. To get a 0.1mm resolution the print area would need to be a 5″ diagonal or a 4″x3″ print area. The better way to do it is with a RepRap and an optical extruding head. You lose the parallel image printing but gain in resolution less than 0.025mm is easily achievable and can move faster than doing thermal plastic extruding….
Hi, there is a question I have. How does he make the thing stick to the upper plate yet keep the resin from clodding in the tank or on the surface the light has to go through?
> How does he make the thing stick to the upper plate yet keep the resin from clodding in the tank or on the surface the light has to go through?
The vat is typically lined with clear silicone.
One question: why does the resin stick to the upper pate but not clodd in the tank or stick to the optica window?
The bottom part ( vat ) is made of non-stick materials ( glass with clear PTFE tape, or silicone on top of it ), and the stage ( upper, moving part ) is made of sticky material ( lemoncurry has success with acrylic )
How about using glass that has been etched, for the top. This would have a slightly rougher finish than just smooth glass.
That was my original idea : works poorly. Acrylic works much much better.
All this nonsense about backlash is only for x,y axes. The z-ax is moving very slow on a threaded rod and only in 1 direction (up). Gravity pulls on the platform so no anti-backlash needed. It’s also easy to get high z-resolution cfr other repraps and mendels already doing that with a 1.8 degree stepper and 8mm threaded rods (and yes with some lm8uu’s the upwards movement is perfekt in 1 line). The thing I’m interested in is how long it took to build that skull cause I’m estimating about +8hrs. And next the killer, that resin is most likely really expensive compared to pla/abs… Apart from that, loved the video and the open source movement in lemoncurry. Also like this projekt a lot for people who want a plug and play experience and willing to spend a few bucks more (but not +20k like the current commercial printers). But indeed for +4k I’d not expect a kit but a boxed finished product since it’s nothing more than 1 or 2 steppers, a threaded rod and a dlp projector boxed in an aquarium ;).
Furthermore this guy has another problem: patents. When opensourcing the idea, there is nobody stopping you. But when selling a complete closed solution that infringes patents you’ll be getting lawsuits buddy…
In his indiegogo campaign Q&A he said the machine does something like 1.5cm per hour.
At first I was extremely surprised at the negativity towards this project as seen here. However when considering its coming mostly from exteemely capable people who want to build their own printers almost 100% DIY and some of whom are writing their own software, this is understandable.
From a consumers/ small business owners point of view, this is an amazing project and product:
-It’s price point is clearly lower than commercial options.
-It’s part quality is clearly higher than similarly priced commercial options.
-It’s material price at 150$ per kg, is clearly lower than commercial options.
—
When compared to DIY community projects, from the small business point of view, there is no comparison:
– There are many abs/PLA printers that are capable of high quality, but who’s upkeep and tinkier factors are prohibitive, and who’s software is a myriad of attributes which need per part management in order to maintain quality and who’s final parts require serious editing to remove basic printing needs of support structures.
– On the resin front there are some great prospects. Nothing even close to finished, nothing to compare to. Not one printer even remotely close to being available at the complicated DIY level, or at the finished what you see is what you get level of the Veloso printer.
—
From my point of view, there is a huge void between commercial printers and DIY printers in terms of quality, stability, initial cost, and material cost.
The Veloso printer seems to fill this void, and from a small business owners perspective, seems like a fantastic purchase. There is no other printer that is available to compare to it.
Of course things will change dramatically over the next two years, and even more two years after that, and two years after that…. In an area that is advancing so rapidly, there is always something better coming. At some point you have to jump in. The Veloso printer is the first commercial quality printer with consumer level cost and usability or printing complex objects reliably.
If there is any other printer that can rival the Veloso printer for quality, object complexity, cost, and actually exists, please let me know!
Just another perspective outside the hacker community.
Your post seems to imply that you have the impression that he is providing calibrated and pre-assembled machines. He is not.
From his FAQ, it takes a few hours to assemble. There is Ikea furniture that takes longer. IMHO, this is a far cry from 11-20 hour ultimaker builds where there is a lot that could possibly go wrong.
I see this printer as just barely fitting into the DIY catergory.
The DIY resin printers that we have been talking about are just as simple to assemble as his! You are comparing the assembly time of FDM printers to to Veloso’s, which is misleading and apples and oranges here.
Also, talking about FDM, the wistle comparison on his indiegogo page will, to anybody who has seen a recent reprap machine print, either show that he is completely incompetent at building 3D printers, which can’t be good, or that he is patently ( pun intended ) dishonnest.
Perhaps you are correct. Are all projector based printers easily assemble? That is good news.
Do you have any comment on the current state of the lemonCurry printer regarding part quality:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/arthurwolf/6854626978/in/set-72157629689547231/
Is this just out of date?
The two most recent prints from the lemoncurry project ( you could find the first one by just looking a few pics later ) :
http://www.flickr.com/photos/arthurwolf/6856811430/in/set-72157629689547231/
https://picasaweb.google.com/105057420467546796702/Pics#5723004858981194146
No, his printer does not “fill a gap”. It’s just the first to be available in the DIY realm, and that’s why he’s going for such insanely high prices, because he knows it’s not going to last.
Also there are numerous indication that his machine is not that good, for example, his print speed is catastrophic, and he’s misleading in his videos about that.
Other DIY ( openhardware ) printers will be much cheaper, have much better speeds, and have opensource, fast evolving software.
And for the few I know of, it’s a matter of either weeks or months before release.
So yes, there is a printer that can compete ( and not only that, but make his look silly ) in terms of quality, and complexity, and cost, and speed, and that you can get *before* juniors : come and join the lemoncurry project, and start building your own with the other fun people.
Could you provide some links to the different projects you know of that are currently being worked on? I caught the LemonCurry and ChemShapes links up there but would love more.
I’m getting excited about the “simplicity” of these printers. It seems like once you get things dialed in there’s very little that can actually go wrong with them compared to the current filament squirters (one of which I own and is currently out of commission ;( ).
Can you provide a better part example than this:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/arthurwolf/6854626978/in/set-72157629689547231/
From what I have been able to find, your description of where the lemoncurry project is at, is very misleading.
I think the lemonCurry project is amazing, but it look pretty far off in terms of part quality, and the DIY level for someone who is not very tech savvy, seems more akin to the ultimaker than the Veloso printer.
How is the Veloso printer not filling the gap of DIY and commercial printers?
It’s has great looking software that is tailored to one printer, the printer its made for. It makes parts at commercial quality for a greatly reduced price.
I am still waiting to see your example of a single other printer that is currently doing the same thing. IMHO, the lemonCurry is nowhere near the same level of the Veloso printer, have I missed something?
I was meaning that’s it’s not filling a gap, because he has a 60 days period for pledging, and then a 3 months period to actually make the kits, and that it’s very likely that the lemoncurry will have kits available before that time.
Please remember : his printers are not for sale right now, it’s just an indiegogo campain at this point, and a very dishonest one on several points.
Also, it’s well known that the indiegogo terms of service do not inssure in any way that you will receive what you have paid for, because you don’t actually pay for something, you pledge to help the project, and may eventually receive something back.
I personally wouldn’t trust a guy that doesn’t mention in his videos that it’s stop motion, that first claimed doing openhardware to come back a year later trying to patent stuff, etc …
Oh and also, yes I can provide a better part : http://www.flickr.com/photos/arthurwolf/6856811430/in/set-72157629689547231/
This one is not complete just because the DLP that was used to test is broken, the machine itself actually work, and the new DLP with yeld succesful prints.
There is really nothing that junior would have as a secret, and other projects would be sturgling to discover/understand : it’s a pretty straightforward process once you go thru a certain list of mistakes 🙂 Junior just got there sooner than the others, that’s not worth giving him 300% profit.
It’s not filling a gap because it’s *still DIY*. If you have to assemble it and calibrate it yourself. That is DIY. You have to know and understand a lot more than just how to bolt things together if you have any chance of getting things working well. It is disingenuous for Veloso to imply that this is going to print as well as his videos.
As far as not having any evidence: We have *no* evidence that the $150/liter resin from Veloso will perform as well as the videos he has posted. Those videos are not made with that resin. He hasn’t even got that resin yet as far as it is known. The resin in the videos is the same stuff he has been using for over a year and at one point stated on his blog is $350 / liter without a lot of volume sales.
Arthur, that is a lumpy blob.
I would imagine that that lumpy blob is the first of many tests that will hopefully end with very very nice looking parts. That is still yet to be seen, which is my point.
I see you love the lemon Curry project and that’s awesome. I don’t see how you can project a final release date. That’s not possible.
T.M, I see what you mean regarding the fact that it still must be put together, and the results of that effort remain a mystery. Also, If the lower cost resin cannot match the advertised quality, then it’s indeed very misleading.
However both of those factors are unknowns. It seems odd to assume he is purposely trying to trick people into buying a terrible printer.
I would assume that (as has been stated already) projector based printers are much easier to put assemble than FDM printers, and that his lower cost resin will match the quality. This could be false though.
I don’t see him as a villain though and I hope to see more information released in the next couple of weeks.
You have raised some interesting questions, thanks for that!
The lumpy blob was made with a broken DLP, unfocused light, unheated resin, and a wobbly Z.
Once those things are fixed, there is really no reason the prints won’t be good.
About release date, I don’t project one, others do.
I’m a DIYer, but other ppl, much more competent than either me or Junior, are working on openhardware DIY kits, with a much better price, and a close release date. The car print example from the lemoncurry home page is an example of what they are capable of. They also have extensive resin magick knowledge, that allow them to make very cheap resin, better resin, faster resin etc …
And while I personally can’t give a release date for my stuff, I can say with a good lot of confidence it’ll be before Junior ships ( I already have a good part of the materials in stock ).
He is not trying to trick ppl into buying a bad printer, of course he thinks his printer is the most wonderful one in the world : he spent a year on it !
But objectively, it’s slow ( 15mm/hour ), it has nothing spectacular technically, no major innovation, and the guy has clearly shown to be kind of an ass, both in the past ( faking going openhardware ) , and now ( censuring honest questions on his blog, not mentionning his video is stop motion, the wistle thing, and other stuff ).
Arthur, you come off as biased and kind of border line vicious.
I think this is because you have open source in your heart and it hurts you to see someone who has closed those doors and is going to make money off of what has become an open source information.
The car body prints from the lemonCurry site are indeed very impressive, but what machine we they printed from?
On a side note, I love open source and truely believe it is essential to advancment. Good luck with your projects, I hope they are met with kind regards!
It’s not me : if you follow the whole story, Junior really pops out as kind of an ass, really.
Commercial alternatives to diy projects are fine, even non-openhardware ones, here the problem is completely different : he acts badly, communicates badly, and really feels, not only to me but to the whole community, as dishonest.
Saying somebody acts bad when he actually does is not being vicious. And as far as biased is concerned, just ask other ppl who know the story of the guy, or do some research on the internets.
I would not consider this printer for small business for the reasons I articulated in my blog. You have a single guy, selling proprietary software, with a track record of poor/no communication, and who refuses to discuss putting the source in escrow in case he gives up, disappears, or otherwise fails to update the software. I’m amazed that people are willing to pay him $499 for software with zero real guarantee, no escrow, no source, no history of listening to his readers/community.
I have nothing against people trying to make a buck, or writing proprietary software. However, if you want to go that route, you have to go way above and beyond to ensure your customers will stay satisfied.
To me, after following the project for a year and watching him move from open to closed, it seems almost a scam to sell software and a resin formula. Lots of warning alarms went off in my head.
I guess its a matter of opinion, maybe you guys are right.
I am very curious about these other printers but there doesn’t seem to be any information around regarding the state of those projects, and the possible release dates Arthur had mentioned.
I don’t know of others with link atm, and those I know you can get in touch in the lemoncurry IRC channel I think.
Also, one is both openhardware AND commercial, and will be cheaper, better, and is WAAAY more competent than junior, but doesn’t have any web presence before the actual product lauch.
Eh…
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2012/03/14/superfast-3d-printing-yields-tiny-racecar-church-bridges/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+80beats+%2880beats%29
Definately not low budget but when your whole print of a race car is only slightly longer than the Dia. of an average human hair, it sort of sets the bar.
I like the demostration of his software. It is indeed a bit of a concern regarding suport for it later. I also like what the guys at chemshapes are doing, and there is one CMD/python interface that uses freesteel, powerpoint, and drives the z-axis. http://www.chrismarion.net/.
could you use a laser with an x-y table instead of the dlp projector? what would be the implications of doing so?
maybe it’s not faster or even slower, but you could scale the print area up. right now the size seems to be limited by the resolution of the DLPs that is likely not to go much higher any time soon.
a laser on a xy table would be much much much slower.
well, actually depends on the laser power and axes speed, but still
what if you would use galvanometers instead like at a lasershow? what is the resolution on those?
could you use a x-y table laser instead of the DLP? seems more scalable.
Well you wait 10 years and there will be a house on every block with one of these hooked to their network.
New kickstarter project for a high res DLP printer. Open source HW/SW (after project is funded)
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/b9creations/b9creator-a-high-resolution-3d-printer