Fwd: FORM 1: An affordable, professional 3D printer by Formlabs — Kickstarter

[Jerry Isdale]

Form1 is the liquid plastic laser cured 3d printer and it went live on Kickstarter this AM with a goal of $100,000.
   http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/formlabs/form-1-an-affordable-professional-3d-printer

They already blew past that and are at $378,000+ now.

I hope they stop at some point before they wind up overselling!

At current rate they will pass $12mil in 30 days of kickstarter.

That could make production a lot harder.

Jerry Isdale

isd...@gmail.com

[Chester Lowrey]

Thats crazy!! I was thinking about a B9creator  http://b9creator.com/ But that one looks like a viable alternative too..

I wonder if the UV laser scanner is better overall versus the DLP projector with color wheel removed (as used on B9creator).. Youd think printing a whole layer at a time might have an advantage in speed and maybe staility, and from the few close up shots Id almost say the B9 looks to have higher resolution, but really hard to compare.. What do you think?

B9 specs:

What are the dimensions and resolution of the build volume?

Build volume varies, depending on resolution.

Resolutions in the x/y plane (horizontal) of 50 to 100 microns are possible by adjustment of the projector’s position and focus.

Resolutions in the z (vertical) build axis from 100 to less than 10 microns are possible via software selection.  Using higher resolutions in the z-axis may result in slower build rates.  We suggest using the same z axis resolution as the x/y plane.

At the 100 micron x/y pixels setting, the build area is 102.4 mm (4.03″) x 76.8 mm (3.02″) x 203.2 mm (8.0″).

At the 50 micron x/y pixels setting, the build area is 51.2 mm (2.02″) x 38.4 mm (1.52″) x 203.2 mm (8.0″).

Form 1 specs:

Min. Feature Size

300 microns 
(.012 inches)

Min. Layer Thickness

25 microns 
(.001 inches)

Build Volume

125 x 125 x 165mm 
(4.9 x 4.9 x 6.5 inches)

Chester

[Matthew Badeau]

There's a DIY solution too. Though, it's just as expensive. I saw this linked on Hacker News in the comments section: http://www.instructables.com/id/Build-a-Laser-3D-Printer-Stereolithography-at-Ho/