Meet The Maker
REGULAR
into hard plastic. So the layers are not done by
melting the plastic, but by putting light in specific
places, and it cures the resin.
“It’s pretty similar to a lot of UV coatings. You put
on a coat of varnish and then you harden it with the
UV light. If you could put the varnish in a specific
space, cure it, put down another layer of varnish, cure
it, put another layer of varnish, cure it, you would
have 3D printing.
“It has a different use [to PLA], it’s high resolution,
and in some instances faster, and it’s usually used
by jewellers.
“Basically if you want to do something that’s very
small and high-detailed, this technology is for you.“If you want small detail, like you have on your
glasses, these things, they would be very hard to
print on FDM; they would not be as detailed. But on
SLA you can print them with no problems.“THE POSTER CHILD OF 3D PRINTING
3D printing is growing up: “It’s interesting to see the
change in the last year, year and a half. There were
a lot of companies who were small, but at some
point the market started consolidating, and I’m very
happy that I started to invest in development a lot
a couple of years ago, so we do our own slicer, our
own firmware, we can develop new stuff. If you are
a company just building Marlin [firmware] and Cura
[slicing] compatible machines, and if you are just
building printers to be compatible with these, you are
never going to make something new. So you know,
it’s market disadvantage. At the end of the day, we
are open-source and everything, but if I need to push
the company forward, you need money, you need
the sales.”If you want small detail,
like you have on your
glasses, these things, they
would be very hard to
print on FDM; they would
not be as detailed”
”