

With $100M in Funding, Carbon3D Will Make 3D Manufacturing a Reality - falcor84
http://techcrunch.com/2015/08/20/with-100m-in-funding-carbon3d-will-make-3d-manufacturing-a-reality/

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Xixi
“This is the first 3D printing tech that really has the potential to break out
of the prototyping realm that 3D printing has been relegated to until now”

Nope. 3D printing has been there for quite a while already: it is being used
quite massively in the aerospace industry, and not for prototyping...

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exacube
examples / links?

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michaelt
[http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-07/12/3d-printed-
pl...](http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-07/12/3d-printed-plane-
by-2050) "Airbus plans to have 3D printed components in the cabins of its
A380s by the end of 2012. Its Eurofighter Typhoon military jet already has
some internal 3D printed components."

Of course, those might be comparatively boring parts, like radio covers and
plastic ducting. You won't be able to 3D print a working jet fighter in your
garage for at least 5 years, maybe more :)

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evgen
Those are also low-value, low-volume parts. 3D printing works for minor
components when you are only building a couple of hundred planes a year, but
the 3D parts themselves have almost no value whatsoever compared to the final
product.

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jglauche
Wow, that's a lot of funding for just another resin 3d printer. We have had
printers like Form1 in the low-cost segment.

I'm surprised about the funding amount, as the market is currently very very
stagnating.

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hanniabu
Their method of manufacturing is different than others. It makes the process
faster, allows for greater detail, eliminated the issue of having layers which
weakens the structure, and it allows for much more complex designs without the
need for temporary structures.

I think their funding is well placed and will indeed give the 3d printing
industry a shake up on the consumer market.

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mcphage
Different from other resin printers? It doesn't seem different than them, at
least from this material.

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saulrh
Quantitative improvement, not qualitative. They don't need to separate the
resin from the base plate after every layer, which means vastly improved speed
and precision and much less complexity. It's the difference between a car that
can go 5 miles per hour and a car that can go 50 miles per hour - only
quantitative improvement, but now you have a reason to use it every day.

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mcphage
Of course, in manufacturing they're competing against injection molding, which
can go a metaphorical 100,000 miles per hour.

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saulrh
But has its _significant_ limitations, notably that it takes a colossal
machine and days to weeks to design, optimize, and machine a mold. Injection
molding works great if you want to get to Pluto, but it'll cost you two years,
a partnership with NASA, and a thousand tons of LH2 and LOX, and that cost
remains constant even you just want to hit the supermarket. Current 3d
printers can get you to the grocery store pretty well, but you're out of luck
for anything bigger.

Carbon3d offers a new middle ground - fast enough and good enough for small
production runs, but without the titanic constant-time overhead demanded by
injection molding. This isn't going to be used for parts that you need ten
million of. It'll be used for parts that you need a few hundred of.

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Retric
Seems like there is a huge opportunity for 3d printing injection molds. It's
probably more a tool chain question than an actual 3d printing question. But,
by reducing the cost gap from mid-scale 3d printing to full scale production
seems like a large potential net win. AKA, if the costs are similar at 10k and
drop after that.

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Abraln
Injection molds need to be ridiculously precise, as in 1/1000 of an inch of
can render it useless. Also, I have doubts that the layered result of 3-D
printing can hold up to the extreme abuse these things get put through after
tens or even hundreds of thousands of cycles. We are talking about foot thick
plates of steel bending and warping from fatigue damage after a while. Even if
you could 3-D print the bulk of it, the job of polishing and detail work would
still need to be done manually.

Edit: after Reading the comment below, I admit I may be somewhat biased from
working with more complex and detailed parts with very right tolerances, so
there may be some applications where it is feasible. All the molds I've
seen/worked with were made the old fashioned way.

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Retric
_tens or even hundreds of thousands of cycles_

If it's reasonably cheap to print, then only lasting say 2,000 cycles would
not prevent a useful mid-scale production runs. Also, the high end of 3d
printing is a lot tougher and has tighter tolerances than you might think.

[http://www.gizmag.com/ge-fires-up-all-3d-printed-jet-
einge/3...](http://www.gizmag.com/ge-fires-up-all-3d-printed-jet-einge/37448/)

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kejaed
There is a TED talk by one of the founders with a little bit more detail on
what makes their printer different.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihR9SX7dgRo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihR9SX7dgRo)

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pp19dd
Thanks for sharing that. I've seen various demos (speed-accelerated videos) of
this before, and this was the first time I've seen it in realtime, happening
on the stage. It really... does look real.

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MechSkep
Very hype heavy article. No mention of Form Labs who is already on the market
with a similar product.

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Animats
Basically, it's another SLA printer, but they use an improved chemistry to
speed up the process.

Autodesk, which now builds a 3D SLA printer for about $5000, has been
experimenting with chemistries in that area.[1] They give more info about the
materials used and the results.

[1] [http://www.instructables.com/id/Continuous-Top-Down-DLP-
Expe...](http://www.instructables.com/id/Continuous-Top-Down-DLP-Experiments/)

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phkahler
This could be really good for optimized lattice structures:

[http://www.altair.com/newsdetail.aspx?news_id=11109&news_cou...](http://www.altair.com/newsdetail.aspx?news_id=11109&news_country=en-
US)

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grondilu
> Instead of using steel to build certain high-strength components of an
> airplane, for instance, Carbon3D would be able to 3D print a lightweight
> alternative by shaping plastic into a form previously impossible to
> manufacture.

This is what I'm most curious about. More specifically, I wonder if Carbon3D's
device could be used for something similar to what Julia Greer is working on
at Caltech (the nanotruss materials).

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dmritard96
Its crazy as just a few months ago the thesis convergance for much of Silicon
Valley was that investing in 3D printing was very much 2014...Sure this one
has faster builds but given that they aren't first movers and have substantial
competition, it's surprising to see so much capitol being pumped in. Perhaps
stratesys or one of the other big guys will want in so the investment makes
sense?

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chockablock
The previous HN discussion has some nice links to published articles on the
tech, and good discussion about the advantages of their approach over
traditional layer-based stereolithography (including e.g. Form Labs).

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9215890](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9215890)

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dankohn1
I like this 1.5 minute video on the technology:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3TgmvV2ElQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3TgmvV2ElQ)

Whether the economics ultimately work or not, it's an incredibly compelling
demo.

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slrelevant
There is an Australian company making something similar.
[http://www.gizmo3dprinters.com.au/](http://www.gizmo3dprinters.com.au/) They
expect to launch their kickstarter project by end of year.

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ErikRogneby
Anyone have more info on the different materials the article mentions? on the
carbon3d.com website they have a couple short clips about elastic or durable,
but that is about it.

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sschueller
Isn't a problem with these resin printers that the resin is quite toxic as
well as the fumes? Also I think there needs to be some post chemical
processing.

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542458
Yes (to be fair, it is getting better as better formulations are developed).
Additionally, resin is expensive and the parts degrade and become brittle and
fragile over time. Their innovation is very cool, but it won't be displacing
FDM any time soon.

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minthd
Is there any way for this technology to do multi-material or multi-color
prints ? how ?

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deadbeef404
I have no idea if it's possible, but I could imagine maybe a multi-frequency
light source where each frequency interacts with a unique color molecule in
the resin to mix colors individually?

