Danish company Create it REAL announced a series of partnerships that should result in several new high speed desktop 3D printers.
The company developed an unusual 3D printer controller board several years ago that is far more powerful than the controllers typically used in desktop 3D printers. The intention of including the extra power was to enable new functions not previously available on desktop 3D printers – or even larger industrial machines.
Their latest innovation that leverages the controller board’s power is realtime encryption of 3D print streams. This creates an environment where 3D designs are securely transferred and 3D printed without the digital design being exposed. The barrier being removed here has largely been the issue in the development of streaming 3D print services.
Create it REAL’s first enabled feature was simply print speed. The powerful processor on their controller board is able to perform the complex calculations required for precise real-time control of rapidly moving motion systems on 3D printers. In other words, typical 3D printers could lose track of their position in extreme speed situations and print quality would suffer, sometimes severely. Create it REAL’s controller board allows a suitably set up 3D printer to operate as much as 5X faster than normal speeds.
But there’s a catch: the motion system of the target 3D printers must be tuned to enable proper operation with Create it REAL’s controller board. You cannot expect optimum results by simply swapping in the new controller board.
Instead Create it REAL engineers have to work with a 3D printer company’s engineers to optimize and synchronize the board with the hardware. That requirement, I think, has somewhat slowed the use of their controller board as they must first gain agreement with the company to proceed. However, they’ve made deals with several companies previously to supercharge their 3D printers.
Now they’re announcing a series of deals with several new 3D printer manufacturers to do exactly this. The thee manufacturers are:
- Rodri, based in Netherlands, who produce a high temperature 3D printer.
- Dood, based in France, who produce a desktop 3D printer.
- Rast3D, based in Bulgaria, who are developing a large-volume 3D printer.
To be sure, these are not the biggest 3D printer manufacturers, but certainly they are in the competitive mix and seeking ways to distinguish themselves from numerous competitors. High speed 3D printing would most certainly do that.
If that wasn’t enough, Create it REAL also announced they’ve struck a deal with a European filament manufacturer to develop 3D print profiles for technical 3D print materials specifically for these accelerated machines. That should greatly assist operators of all Create it REAL-accelerated machines because they can then more easily achieve optimum 3D print results, which become more elusive when pushing the envelope on print speeds.
Via Create it REAL
