Researchers at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland have found a new technology for 3D printing. They created a light-curing resin and light beams for solidification of precisely chosen resin zones. In addition, they discovered that this process reduces printing time by 30 times compared to current filaments.
They create a new process for a much more efficient 3D printer
What this new process does is, through light pulses, harden the concrete areas of the resin. The idea was born about five years ago by EPFL scientists. It took a long time to fine-tune this process and to have confidence in this process. Now they can say they have has developed the fastest 3D printer in the world.
Currently, the 3d printers They work through a filament which is melted by an extruder which moves to form. Saying the process is extremely slow, since the final object is built in layers. We have drying times, something that limits the manufacturing times of the parts quite a bit.
The solution of these Swiss scientists is based on a volumetric method to form objects. At a simple level, it is pour resin into a glass container and swirl it around. As the container spins, the light rays hit the areas of the resin you want to solidify.
According to the researchers, it is “a very precise method and can produce objects with the same resolution as existing 3D printing techniques”. Undoubtedly, the most interesting thing about this process is that it requires less time.
They created a yoda figure in opaque resin which cost 20 seconds with this new method. The same number, with a conventional 3D printercost 10 minutes being created Note that the quality and detail of the two methods are comparable.
A very interesting manufacturing method
During the investigation period, transparent resin was used in most cases. However, for this case, an opaque resin was used. It seems that this is initially outside the limits of this 3D printing technique. Although in the test performed we can see how well it worked and created a fairly accurate figure.
The advantage of using opaque resin is that it can be used for the manufacture of biomedical objects. It offers us flexibility and thanks to this method it will be very fast to print a prosthesis using a 3D printer.
However, scientists are not satisfied with the results. Now work on printing multiple objects simultaneously. Work is also underway to improve the output resolution as much as possible. We will see if in the future this technique can be reproduced and made accessible to all those who wish to develop parts.
