DAQRI
Daqri, a start-up specialising in augmented reality, has presented a 3D printer that works 100 times faster than a conventional 3D printer.
How does it achieve this? By using a hologram. Daqri, a start-up specialising in augmented reality, uses a conventional 3D printing technology – a laser polymerisation – but at the beginning of this year it added a chip that it had developed to create a light field without complex optics. The resulting hologram is projected onto material. A few seconds later, the object appears – 100 times faster than an object created by a “conventional” 3D printer.
5 seconds suffice
The tests only demonstrate how a simple paper clip is printed, but the printing speed heralds unlimited possibilities. In conventional 3D printing, an object typically requires several back-and-forth scans and therefore several minutes to produce, whereas the hologram process does the job in a single 5-second flash.
“By reducing cycle time, the technology could help boost industrial productivity and thereby bring down production costs.”
“By reducing cycle time, the technology could help boost industrial productivity and thereby bring down production costs. That is a major advantage,” says Alexandre Mandon, pre-sales engineer at Actemium Saint-Etienne Process Solutions (VINCI Energies). Daqri claims that larger objects could be printed just as rapidly.
The holographic 3D technique would also make it possible to avoid the defects that occur in conventional layer-by-layer printing, and thus eliminate weak areas and boost product reliability.
09/06/2017
