Cyclops - A Sideways step on DIY SLA idea

I would like to share an idea I'm incubating,

I would like to look at making a hybrid between the galvo-based Form1 and the cartesian-movement based mUVe1 - that is, a near-UV curing resin printer that uses a combination of mechanics and electronics to expose 1-part resin to UV light to make parts.

The intended advantages;
1. UV-curing resin, cheaper that light-curing as used by some DLP
2. Out-of-the product parts that can be salvaged
3. Speed of using mirrors without losing the XY accuracy at the edges of the printer

Basically I'm suggesting something that uses a (2d) laser printer printhead underneath the print vat to provide the x-axis, mechanically slide that for they-axis and lift-up z-axis.

Can it be done? I suspect so. Can I do it? Probably not - not if the significant other has their way.

So to break it down further, can I put a UV laser in a laser printer? Yes
http://www.das-labor.org/wiki/LaserExposer
[www.youtube.com]

This the shoots up at the tub, which has a teflon coat on it. It's essentially printing the slice our of slicer like a page, and after enough of exposing that line, we advance the assembly for the y-stage on a linear bearing.

Once a whole slice is complete, we do a "peel" manoeuvre and raise the platform

My expected parts:

1) Laser assemby fom a cheap laser printer (HL-2032)
2) 405nm laser, swap-in with some extra parts to regulate increased power
3) Three stepper motors; y and two for z ( twisting )
4) Prototyping frem, openrail / microrax or similar
5) control board (Smoothieboard?)
6) Resin Tank (Glass with teflon tape coating)

Any ideas / suggestions?

LShearer,
thanks for the link, I think your idea has legs (mainly because I worked on something like it some time ago) I may be wrong but laser printers with polygons seem to be getting rare, they use light bars instead, (cheaper), another approach that seemed
good was to have a laser projector, seach for "kuntman laser", unfortunate name, but he created a projector from parts that cost pennies, I am now building a dlp printer but may go back to the kuntman approach.

found it , [laserpointerforums.com]

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Random Precision

Hello and sorry for hijacking the post

I am Ali Akdurak, Mr Kuntman's son is working at our company as an electronics engineers for several years now, the Kuntman scanner("Kuntman laser") is his fathers work. Mehmet Ali Kuntman is also an author of a historical novel which he translated from their grandfathers journals(WW1). His father was a physicist at a renowned university. I saw kuntman scanner at their house and it was very interesting.

I have decided to try to build a SLA 3D printer with kuntmans biaxial scanner.

Altought the idea behind the cyclops seems very logical to me I think kuntman's scanner will have much less material and moving part then a x-wide tilting mirror for cyclops to work. After all, mirror(s) in kuntman's scanner is just a stainless steel fork moved/tunned by electromagnetism.

The problem I believe with kuntman scanners application for this purpose will be high precision electronis control to on/off the UV laser. I will create a post after I think and work on it a bit.

Good Luck with cyclops anyway I hope it works very good

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/16/2014 04:44AM by Ali Akdurak.

Does the 405 laser cure the UV resin? It isn't actually in the UV wavelength range. Close but still visible.

Quote
KDog
Does the 405 laser cure the UV resin? It isn't actually in the UV wavelength range. Close but still visible.

... depends on the resin ... but all UV-resins I've got so far were sensitive in 405nm ...

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Viktor
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Aufruf zum Projekt "Müll-freie Meere" - [reprap.org] -- Deutsche Facebook-Gruppe - [www.facebook.com]

Call for the project "garbage-free seas" - [reprap.org]

From what I have researched, I think best lasers to use are 405 or 450nm for uv resin.

Main point is that this range is depends on the chemical composition of the uv resin. Thats why for example Form 1 say that their resin will not work with other machines and so on.

... normal UV-resins won't react with 445nm!

Made a test with a spot-a resin that he mixed for 445nm, but it was nearly impossible to cure it with 500mW@445 on a spot of 0.05mm (hardened not on the surface, but at the bottom of the vat, where the reflection added some more energy-density)

... but cured instantly with 50mW@405nm ...

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Viktor
--------
Aufruf zum Projekt "Müll-freie Meere" - [reprap.org] -- Deutsche Facebook-Gruppe - [www.facebook.com]

Call for the project "garbage-free seas" - [reprap.org]

Hmmm

Well lower wavelength means higher frequency which also translates to higher surface energy transfer(in some materials). And if that frequency hits the sweetspot for that molecular composition it will resonate and transfer even more energy.

At least that is the theory. But I don't know how this could be engineered for optimum energy transfer to UV resin.

Which means this post is just meaningless and we are still at the point zero.

I ordered a 405nm 1 watt "blue" laser from china which I will experiment hopefully it will be delivered in several weeks.