Another Source For Quality 3D Printer Resins: Liqcreate

3D printer resins and prints [Source: Liqcreate]

Today I’m looking at the products from another 3D printer resin provider, Liqcreate.

These days I am paying more attention to resin vendors due to the increasing frequency of resin-powered 3D printers on the market. It wasn’t that long ago that desktop-scale resin machines, be they SLA, DLP or LCD in nature, were relatively expensive.

That’s no longer the case, as resin 3D printers are now easily affordable by almost anyone. In fact there are several incredibly inexpensive devices that repurpose smartphone screens as their light engine, lowering their cost considerably.

But these machines will need materials to produce anything, and that requires a vendor selling them. Many 3D printer manufacturers offer a limited set of resins with their machine, with some being mandatory as their equipment is designed to accept their proprietary — and usually quite expensive — resins only.

Open Material Resins

But there are a growing number of “open materials” devices that are able to accept any technically suitable resin from third parties.

This opens up a great many possibilities, as third parties are free to experiment marketing different materials with unusual properties that you would not expect to obtain from 3D printer manufacturers. Their focus is of course on the machine and not the materials, as it should be.

Today there is a massive market for 3D printer filament and as such there are now dozens of filament vendors, typically located regionally. These operations connect with networks of filament manufacturers to offer seamless access to a wide variety of filaments to the public. Increasingly some of these are now beginning to offer resins in addition to filaments.

Liqcreate 3D Printer Resins

One of the possible sources for resins is Netherlands-based Liqcreate, which has been operating for about three years now. The company offers a good selection of resins with varying properties to match the needs of different applications, including:

• General purpose resins in “Stone Coal Black” and Blue

• Premium White & Black resins

• A glow-in-the-dark resin they call “Hazard Glow”

• Engineering resins for Strength or Impact

• And an upcoming Dental resin

What’s interesting to me is that these resins seem to have a good collection of attributes, such as:

• Smooth surface

• High accuracy with low shrinkage after printing

• Low odor

• Maintain color when exposed to UV light

• Some resins (their Premium line) are able to work with low power, making them ideal for LCD systems

• Wide light frequency range to accommodate many different 3D printers

Glow in the dark 3D prints made on a resin 3D printer [Source: Liqcreate]

Liqcreate Resin Compatibility

That last point is quite important, as while most resin 3D printers used to use a 405nm laser wavelength, that’s not always the case anymore.

Liqcreate publishes a list of compatible resin 3D printers, recently including:

• Formlabs Form 2

• Miicraft 125

• Sprintray Moonray S & D

• Anycubic Photon

• Kudo3D Bean

• Cubicon Lux

• Wanhao Duplicator 7

• Wanhao Duplicator 8

• Uniz Slash

• Phrozen Shuffle

• Phrozen XL

• Phrozen Transform

• Asiga Max

• Peopoly Moai

• Kelant S400

• Prusa SL1

• Elegoo Mars

And for each of these they provide print settings for optimal results! For other machines they seem to be able to help determine the correct settings by contacting them directly.

Liqcreate Resin Costs

Liqcreate says their resins are “easy to use and have the best costs/quality performance in the market.” Is this true?

I looked at their pricing and found that their 250g bottles were sold at prices ranging from €25 (US$27.50) for their basic white or black materials, up to €56 (US$62) for their advanced “Strong-X” material. This corresponds to US$110-248 per liter. That’s more than the lowest price I’ve seen, but on the other hand these are high-quality resins. One good aspect is that they ship for free to European destinations for any order over €500 (US$562). It’s unclear if there are North American distributors for these products yet.

If you’re looking for some high-quality resin and are located in Europe, Liqcreate could be a good option.

Via Liqcreate