Sep 18, 2017 | By Benedict
Ukrainian 3D printing startup Sprybuild has developed and filed a patent for a new continuous DLP 3D printing technology called CPWC (Continuous Production with Wavefront Converting). The company says the technology could be used to build the fastest DLP 3D printers in the world.
It’s a known fact that if you're going to make your mark as an innovator in the additive manufacturing world, you’re probably going to need an acronym for your new 3D printing technology. Companies like Carbon, Rize, and Impossible Objects have all dutifully followed the advice (CLIP, APD, and CBAM, respectively), and now Ukrainian newcomer Sprybuild has joined the list of companies vying for your attention with initials.
Sprybuild’s technology, billed as a “a revolutionary approach to overcoming the main technical contradiction of constructing products from a liquid photopolymer,” is a form of DLP 3D printing called Continuous Production with Wavefront Converting, or CPWC. It works by redistributing radiation energy in the microscopic layer of the construction area, and can print objects at a speed of up to 10 mm per minute.
The technology has other advantages too. For example, Sprybuild says its CPWC tech can be used to 3D print any photopolymerizable liquids, even complex mixtures of useful materials. “Photocurable liquids may contain additional ingredients,” says the company’s CEO Evgeniy Ivanov. “For example in the form of nano- and microparticles, fillers, dyes, microfibers, ferromagnetics, paramagnetics, metals, luminophores—these can be various sorts of organic fillers, i.e. medications and microcapsules.”
CPWC, which Sprybuild says is unlike anything else on the 3D printing market, is based on the “transformation of the wavefront of actinic radiation,” which forms a projection of the printed object directly in the build area. The technology purportedly provides an improved relaxation of residual stresses in the products formed, as well as offering a larger build volume than typical resin printing processes.
The company suggests that CPWC 3D printing tech could be used to produce a diverse range of objects, including electronic device cases, molds, gear wheels, mounting hardware, tubes, decorative pieces, and more. Additionally, the tech could purportedly find itself at home in the medical world, where it could be used to make equipment such as stents, microneedle arrays, optical fibers, and other devices.
Long-term, Sprybuild even thinks it could tackle the bioprinting of organ matrices, since the individual pixels of the printing system can be much smaller than those of regular DLP and LCD projectors.
A prototype of the first Sprybuild 3D printer is currently being demonstrated to the public at the 2017 edition of TechCrunch's Disrupt SF conference in San Francisco, September 18-20. The winning company of the Startup Battlefield event, in which Sprybuild is competing, will receive a $50,000 grand prize.
Posted in 3D Printer
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every day those $100's of million spent of CLIP look worse and worse