Additive Process that Can Handle Ollies

(Image: Protolabs)

If much of conventional 3D printing is like, well, printing, the process used by systems built by Carbon is more like photography.

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Take a picture, why don’t you? That is, according to the company its process “uses digital light projection in combination with oxygen permeable optics.” There is a sequence of UV images projected on the reservoir of resin; the material solidifies where the projection alights, and the build platform rises.

Apparently, there are other photo polymerization processes, but these don’t produce particularly robust parts. So the Carbon CLIP process adds a second heat-activated programmable chemistry to its materials, which means that the parts not only have high resolution, but “engineering-grade mechanical properties.”

Protolabs, a digital manufacturing service provider (it has technology including CNC machines, injection molding machinery, and an array of additive systems) has just added Carbon equipment to its portfolio.

How robust? And one of the parts that it shows can be produced is that skateboard wheel shown above.

Realize that no one is going to want to throw a darkslide and have their wheels crush upon sticking it, so this must be resilient.

(According to Protolabs, it is offering materials “comparable to ABS and polycarbonate” to be somewhat more technical about it.)