Sculpteo offering 3D printing using CLIP

After reading the title of this piece, you may be thinking – “3D printing?”, “CLIP?” and “On a phone site?” Well, after reading the press release a number of times, I was thinking the same, but it occurred to me that 3D printing regardless of its infancy will impact the technology that is around us, especially smartphone design.

So what is it? Well, Scuplteo claims to be the leader in online 3D printing, and are the first 3D platform to use CLIP technology offered by Carbon3D. The printer uses a breakthrough printing method to enable continuous production of commercial quality parts. Sculpteo is also revealing new resins specifically for use with the Carbon 3D printer. This service will be available from March 1 this year, exclusively at sculpteo.com.

The Carbon3D process was unveiled nearly a year ago by the Californian startup of the same name. It was inspired by the T-1000 from Terminator 2 (cool or what?!), and its new CLIP (Continuous Liquid Interface Production) technology uses the power of light and oxygen to model a photosensitive liquid resin. Instead of printing parts layer by layer like traditional 3D printers, the printer developed by Carbon grows parts in a single unit. The resin used is targeted by a projected light source that passes through a special window that is transparent to light and permeable to oxygen: the light polymerizes the resin and the oxygen inhibits that process, so by controlling the oxygen flux through the window, the process creates a ‘dead zone’ – a thin layer of uncured resin between the window and the object.

As a Carbon partner, Sculpteo is currently the only online 3D print service to own a printer of this type in its San Leandro facility in California. So Sculpteo is now unveiling a series of new resins ranging from rigid to flexible, all of which are supported by the Carbon 3D printer. They make it possible to prototype an enormous range of products (from load-resistant mechanical parts to seals and flexible containers) at very high resolution, as well as producing commercial quality parts. You can now get a cheap 3D printer fairly easy and do this yourself.

These materials have been designed to respond to key engineering requirements, from the elongation and strength expected of injection-molded elastomers to the temperature resistance of a nylon-glass composite.

The availability of this machine via the Sculpteo online service and in combination with these new materials, offers industry and private individuals a new route to manufacture that is more precise and functional, with a more seamless finish, all because the visible layers characteristic of parts produced using a traditional 3D printer simply aren’t there with the Carbon 3D process.

Clément Moreau, CEO and Co-founder of Sculpteo stated: “This new technology and the revolutionary materials offered are taking 3D printing to a new level. The gap between product design and manufacturing has never been shorter; these speeds are game-changing…”

Check out more in the ~~CLIP~~ clip below.