Typical 3D printers produce objects a layer at a time, either by melting plastic, sintering metal, or solidifying light cured resin – basically 2D printing iterated into 3D objects... A startup called Carbon3D just announced a new process (it’s the March 20th cover article in Science and a Monday TED Talk) that allows for much faster (25-100 X) “printing.”
The new process called Continuous Liquid Interface Production (CLIP) uses a combination of oxygen and laser light to produce complex shapes much more quickly. The end products are apparently much stronger than those produced using layer-by-layer technology. Feature sizes down to 20 microns(!) are possible.
Carbon3D has raised $41M in venture funding (Sequoia Capital is one of their funding sources.)
I'll be playing with a much simpler 3D printing technology over the next few weeks and I'll be blogging about the experience.
No comments:
Post a Comment