Solus High Resolution DLP 3D Printer

[mongerdesigns]

After 2 years of development, the Solus 3D printer is on Indiegogo.

I've had a chance to test some of my prints on this machine and it handled them incredibly well. The print quality matched and in some areas surpassed higher end super expensive commercial machines.

Solus also has an incredible patent-pending peeling system and resin tank. The resin tank for the Solus doesn't use pdms or teflon for the coatin, so it lasts forever and you never need to replace the tank.

The low energy required for the peel process also improves the print quality and allows to print large models without the risk of failure.

[mammasan]

Monger,
I've followed your posts over on the form1 forums. I'm glad to hear that you like this printer. I have backed them. I tried the Pegasus and was not happy with the results so I sold it. I have a LittleRP on the way soon. I am thinking that DLP is going to give me better results than the laser based systems. I hope their vat coating and tilt system is as good as they claim.

[mongerdesigns]

Hi Mammasan,

Thanks for following my posts on the form1 forum. I really like my form1, but I'm still not sure formlabs is committed to supporting jewelry designers at the lever that is needed.

That's why I'm also backing the Solus. Also because I've seen what it can do. A friend of mine has an envisiontec and he thought I'm BSing him when I showed him the ring that was printed on the solus. He couldn't believe it came out of $1000 machine.

Hopefully more jewelers can jump on this opportunity to back this awesome machine and help it reach the funding goal or more.

[mammasan]

I will be using my printer for dental uses, printing models and hopefully surgical guides. My prints on the Pegasus weren't accurate and I was wasting tons of resin.

[Liquid Garden]

Thank you for your support, I'm Mark the creator of Solus.

And thank you Steve for software, we used it a lot while creating our prototypes. Now that Creation Workshop has light correction mask support I have contacted Steve about licensing the software for Solus. Our software does not have this feature and I think it will be a great step to improving light uniformity.

If you have any questions about the printer, please feel free to ask.

[Glacian22]

Welcome Mark! Your machine looks really nice, especially considering the very reasonable price point. Can you give us any hints about what material you're using for your non-stick coating? I understand if you're hesitant to say right now and want to hold onto that info until your campaign is finished, but I know everyone would be interested to hear about how you've tackled that problem.

[Liquid Garden]

Hi Glacian,

I am a little hesitant, especially after I saw that Form1 ripoff company in China. But I'll give you guys the basic idea.

We use a thicker, stronger film (not FEP) and a tilt peel... but if you look carefully the whole vat doesn't tilt. I think maybe you can figure it out from here.

Mark

[Liquid Garden]

I hope it is ok to post these pictures here.

They were printed at 25 XY and 20 Z with MakerJuice SF. The first piece is ~16 mm diameter (a dime is 17.9 mm) and most of the raised borders are ~100 microns and the channels ~200 microns. The second piece is ~20x20mm and some of the holes are ~200 microns. Both were designed by Jewels Cottage from India.

[klambson]

Love the design, and the quality output of the Solus is incredible. Question: how is it that stray light hitting the mirror isn't a problem?

[Liquid Garden]

Hi klambson,

We have left the resin in the vat for days and haven't had any issues with stray light other than a slight increase in the resin viscosity. I'm not sure if the viscosity increase was due to polymerization or solvents evaporating.

I'm guessing the ambient daylight in a room that reaches the resin doesn't have the intensity to cause the photoinitiator to cleave (or not significantly) and most kinds of artificial lighting don't emit much in the frequency range that the commonly used photoinitiator(s) cleaves at (<440nm).


Photo from housecraft.ca


Photo from Olympus America

That being said, it's probably a bad idea to place the printer in front of a window or other source of direct sunlight and we recommend bottling the resin when not printing.

Anybody else using a mirror that has had any problems with this?