And so the deluge of resin-based 3D printers begins

It looks like 2012 is shaping up to be the year of the resin-based 3D printer. The latest comes from [Michael Joyce] and is called the B9Creator.  Like other resin printers, [Michael] used a DLP projector to cure the print one layer at a time. The layer height is on the order of 100 microns – crazy for a kit-based printer.

There is a  Kickstarter for the B9Creator where kits are available for $2400 USD. Everything is included in this kit, including the DLP projector and a kilogram of resin. $2400 is much more expensive than even the fanciest melted-plastic 3D printer such as a Makerbot or RepRap, but that’s the price you pay for high-quality prints.

Of course this project comes a month after an earlier, similar, and shadier project called the Veloso 3D printer. The B9Creator promises to be open source once all the Kickstarter machines are shipped out, and [Michael] is very open about his designs and his resin formula – an admirable quality in a maker.

You can check out a load of videos of the B9Creater we found after the break.

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3D printer with insane accuracy uses a DLP projector

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.

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