Incredible. I may be the only one in the dark, but until this moment I had no idea 3D printing at this high a fidelity was possible. It looks like a real bee.
Last I knew, the best 3D prints still looked like hardened play dough
Last I knew, the best 3D prints still looked like hardened play dough
Do that hundreds or thousands of times and you eventually get Z height.
Look up the EufyMake E1 for a consumer/prosumer version.
HeyGears is releasing a prosumer full color UV inkjet resin printer this year for < $2K: https://store.heygears.com/products/heygears-g1-direct
Same thing here hardly anything common with hobbyist resin printers beside using some kind of UV curable resin. And as with other 3d printing technologies Stratasys is decade ahead in terms of research and commercialization sitting on all the relevant patents and selling expensive machines (sometimes as a result of acquisition).
Once the patents ran out maybe there will be more advancements and general availability. Although I expect much longer delay compared to FDM and SLA/DLP 3d printers. Inkjet printing on paper is already complicated and finicky enough, It's not something a hobbyist can make from scratch in a garage. Add a resin which will by design solidify when exposed to light potential destroying the inkjet nozzles, and doesn't necessarily behave as regular ink when attempting to spray it through inkjet head and you get the need for some serious investment to recreate the technology even with patents expired. The recent hobbyist 2d UV printers are step in this direction, but commercial/industrial UV printers have existed for quite a while. To me this suggests there is additional gap in patents/technological challenges between textured 2d UV printers, and full 3d UV inkjet printing.
There's nothing I personally want to bring, but these would make AMAZING gifts, cool things for your desk/bookcase, etc.
There have got to be so many interesting, educational, and cultural objects you could print like this, and the fact you can "blow up" an object like a insect is even cooler.
Depending on the price, this feels like something that could take off in a big way.
An example would be the multicolor articulated dragons that are flooding flea markets and garage sales around the world : when printed properly they are highly detailed and looked mass produced. Unsuspecting parents buy those for their kids and have zero idea these were 3D printed on $200 printers.
The 3D printing world progressed a huge lot in a few years, which is what prompted me to buy one. It progressed so much it s basically solved.