OWL WORKS Morphs Their Resin 3D Printer into an Affordable Size

Korea-based OWL WORKS launched the Morpheus Delta, an unusual resin-based desktop 3D printer with a rock-bottom price. 

Unlike other 3D printer startups that continually emerge on Kickstarter and similar crowdfunding platforms, OWL WORKS has been there before: last year they had a very successful launch of their first machine, the Morpheus 3D Printer. 

It was a large unit with a price of USD$3,799, and capable of 3D printing very high quality models. But what was most interesting about this machine was it’s alternative resin 3D printing process.  

Virtually all resin-based 3D printers use one of two processes to fuse liquid resin: a laser laboriously traces each voxel on each layer; or a DLP projector smashes all the voxels at once per layer. Both approaches have advantages and disadvantages. 

However, OWL WORKS uses neither process and instead uses something they call “LIPS”. Basically they use a standard LED panel instead of a laser or DLP projector. The panel is placed directly under the clear resin tank, so that the illuminated pixels are uniformly adjacent to the resin to be fused. 

The LIPS approach is very powerful, because it can provide higher X-Y resolution than some other approaches. And it’s as fast or even faster than the DLP projection approach, too. 

However, for most people the original Morpheus was a bit expensive, at USD$3,799. But now they’re introducing the Morpheus Delta, a much smaller version of the Morpheus using the same technologies. 

The build volume is 150 x 85 x 150, typical for high resolution resin units. The Morpheus Delta offers 0.19mm XY resolution and up to 0.025mm on the Z-axis. Printing is very fast, 36mm per hour and does not depend on object complexity. This resolution is not quite as good as most other resin machines, but the cost of the machine very much compensates for that. 

In this machine you will be able to use any suitable photopolymer resin, enabling a wide variety of materials. 

But what’s most interesting is the price of this machine: in 2017, retail pricing will be in the USD$1,100-1,300 range. However, for the Kickstarter launch some units were sold for as little as USD$499! The price rises as more units are sold, however, with current pricing ranging from USD$579 to USD$745. 

This is a very low price for a unit with these capabilities. 

However, as this is a crowdfunding venture from a startup company, I must issue a caution as always for such situations, especially given the recent troubles of other 3D printing launches. 

Via Morpheus and Kickstarter