Carbon3D has developed a brand new 3D printing technology the company claims is 25-100 times faster than all other competitor resin printing techniques in the market.
The new technique, called Continuous Liquid Interface Production (CLIP), prints in 3 dimensions at once by using photosensitive resin and a laser to cure it into a solid.
This process is not new, but the the fact that the procedure is carried out all at once, versus layer by layer, makes it very unique compared to existing 3D printing methods.
Below is an excerpt from Carbon3D’s website explaining how CLIP works:
Traditional 3D printing requires a number of mechanical steps, repeated over and over again in a layer-by-layer approach. CLIP is a chemical process that carefully balances light and oxygen to eliminate the mechanical steps and the layers.
It works by projecting light through an oxygen-permeable window into a reservoir of UV curable resin. The build platform lifts continuously as the object is grown.
The heart of the CLIP process is a special window that is transparent to light and permeable to oxygen, much like a contact lens.
By controlling the oxygen flux through the window, CLIP creates a “dead zone” — a thin layer of uncured resin between the window and the object.
This makes it possible to grow without stopping. As a continuous sequence of UV images are projected, the object is drawn from the resin bath. Sophisticated software manages the entire process by controlling the variables.
Carbon3D is keeping their new efficient 3D printing tech relatively secret at the moment, but they have managed to secure about $41 million in funding to date from venture capital firms.
Needless to say, it looks like they have the money to further develop the technology moving forward.
