First prints off the new FEP flexi-vat for my LittleRP. Works a treat! Marvin was printed before I recalibrate to take into account the change in the focal distance, so he’s a bit squashed.
So flexi-vats are all the rage now. Nice! Now, if you guys can get ahold of that Teflon AF stuff that the super fast resin printer is using… 
@ThantiK
think there’s more to it than just the membrane, but yeah, it’s progress. Have to say, so far I’m impressed - a lot better
release than PDMS
Looking good! I can’t wait until I have mine done.
@John_Driggers You seem like the type of guy who likes to experiment. I did some research before Carbon 3d came out with their method. I found that a thin layer of “glycerin” under the resin will create a separation layer that is easy to pull off, and might be suitable for continuous printing. I don’t have a dlp printer, but I had success with some glycerin and resin in a petri dish. I shined a 5mw uv laser underneath as I pulled the platform up, and within about 1 second, I had a pillar of cured resin about 20mm long. I wanted to continue experimenting with it, but lack the funds to get a resin printer. The layer cure time is still the limiting factor for continuous printing, but with the glycerin you shouldn’t have to “peel” the layers anymore. Just one continuous lift. Keep me posted if you try this out!
@John_Driggers Glycerin also has very favorable optical qualities so it wont diffract the light too much, and it is much denser than the resin. I used makerjuice for my experiments. Also you can get glycerin at most shopping markets. I have many ideas relating to this concept as I was planning on pursuing this 3d printer idea, but I would love to collaborate with you or anyone else that is interested to maybe make an open source resin printer comparable to Carbon 3d. I also have a very efficient and extremely fast method for curing the resin. Better than projectors, and most galvo setups! I don’t like just sitting on this knowledge, so lets start a collaboration!
@Ryan_Branch Curious as to what you are thinking about doing with glycerin as I also have a LittleRP.
@Ryan_Branch
@Shane_Graber 's the resin master! Also curious to hear about your curing ideas - I’ve almost completely given up on lasers - I had a Cartesian laser setup originally, and then tried galvos briefly.
@John_Driggers There is a company by the name of Microvision. They manufacturer laser Pico-projectors that use a very different dlp technology. Basically there projectors have a red, green, and blue laser that are pulsed for each pixel as a single mirror “scans” across the screen to create an image. The fact that they use lasers and a single mirror which is basically a very very fast galvo, let’s you cure each layer as if it is one solid uv picture. They have a new projector coming out that has a resolution of 1080p I believe. It would be trivial to replace the RGB lasers with 3 uv lasers, and in the software just make the part to be printed show up as white like any other projector which would turn on the RGB lasers which are now 3 uv lasers to create a power output of 3x what each laser diode can output. Then you have a high uv output that could cure each layer very very fast. One limiting factor there would be how much uv power the little mirror in the projector could handle, so I dont think anything over 5w would be needed. Also helps that the projector is really small as well. I wanted to get my hands on one of the new projectors to modify, but the new one will cost around $400 and didn’t have the money to go forward with it. Take a look at Microvision’s website to get a better understanding. BTW I am posting all this info as I would like to grow the open source side of sla printers. I would hope we could keep this open source, but as I am posting this on a public chat, I would just hope that no one would “takerbot” the idea and use it in closed source printers. Love to hear what you guys think.
@Shane_Graber Hey, wasn’t just limiting this to just John, the more that want to help out, or experiment, the merrier!
@Ryan_Branch if you have a contact there that you have been talking with, I’d love to talk to them too. I’m in process of developing a compact resin printer myself and I’d like to explore modifying these projectors to see if its something worth pursuing.
I’d like to pick your brain about it too, I have personally found modifying current projectors anything but trivial to get UV output. So it sounds like you might know a thing that I don’t :).
@Anderson_Ta I don’t have a contact with anyone there. I was planning on just modifying their commercial projector when it is released. I know that I could modify it without too much trouble. I understand the circuitry on laser side of things, and know how I would do it. If I was going to make a commercial product, I would eventually partner with them, but that would of been a long term goal. Are you planning on making your printer open source?
@Ryan_Branch Ahh, I see. Yeah, hacking something isn’t usually a good route to commercializing anything :P. Needs to be scalable after all!
As for the printer…yes! the design is going to be open.
They do have a developer kit if you want to integrate their module. I would personally start with the commercial one, but they seem like they are willing to work with people that have a use for their technology. Another thing to note is that since it uses lasers, there is no need for a lens to focus the image, it is always in focus.