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Anycubic announced a new and rather large MSLA 3D printer, the Photon M3 Premium that has a unique and powerful light engine.
Anycubic has produced a line of “M3” devices recently, starting with the Photon M3, the Photon M3 Plus and the PhotonM3 Max. We’ve actually done hands-on reviews of the Photon M3 and the Photon M3 Plus and found them to be excellent machines.
The Photon M3 Premium is likely to follow that pattern.
The pre-assembled Photon M3 Premium is a large MSLA device with some good specs:
- 250 x 220 x 120 mm build volume
- Dynamically activated cooling fan when temperatures exceed 65C, greatly extending the life of the system
- Linear rails and ball screw motion system provides fast and smooth lifting, and elimination of layer lines
- Huge 10” color touchscreen for operational controls
- Pixel area of 7680 x 4320 (8K resolution)
- 0.0285mm pixel size
- Dual air filters
- Extra-deep resin vat for longer operation
- Connection to Anycubic Cloud for remote operation, and direct access to over 20,000 3D models
The 8K resolution is important because in MSLA devices the LCD panel’s pixels are splashed across the build area. If the build area is larger, then the pixels are also larger, meaning a more coarse 3D print. However, by increasing the resolution of the LCD panel to 8K, Anycubic is able to stretch the build area to a large 250 x 120 mm size without losing the crispness of prints.
Aside from the large build volume, the main feature of the Photon M3 Premium is the powerful light engine, which uses Anycubic’s LighTurbo 2.0 technology.
LighTurbo 2.0 is quite different from typical resin 3D printer light engines, and offers three important benefits:
- More consistent print results due to vastly improved light uniformity across the entire print area
- Minimized light dispersion, greatly reducing aperture patterns
- Significantly lower light dispersion, resulting in far greater print accuracy
But how does LightTurbo 2.0 achieve these benefits?
LighTurbo 2.0 involves use of an unusual COB (chip-on-board) LED lighting system that produces very strong illumination. This is coupled with a concave mirror, quite different from the usual Fresnel lens used in other MSLA devices. The result is far greater light uniformity, which Anycubic states is over 90%.
The LightTurbo 2.0 system also almost eliminates light dispersion, resulting in no aperture patterns that are commonly seen in other Fresnel lens-based systems.
Combining all these benefits together means a 3D printer equipped with LighTurbo 2.0 should produce prints of very high quality.
In practical terms, this means the Photon M3 Premium can print objects with very fine details, even at larger sizes. Larger objects can be 3D printed in entirety without risking loss of fine details. Above you can see an example of this capability, as compared to alternative 8K 3D printers.
The built-in air filtration system on the Photon M3 Premium is unique, as inexpensive desktop MSLA 3D printers simply don’t include this feature. Anycubic has modified their AirPure filter for direct installation into the Photon M3 Premium’s build chamber.
Normally, the AirPure devices are battery powered, but here they are modified to include a USB connector that plugs directly into the Photon M3 Premium’s base. This means you get filtration without having to worry about battery levels.
The result is that the odors produced by typical 3D printer resins are greatly reduced, making for a safer work area. Note, however, that every 3D printer workstation should provide some external ventilation for safety reasons.
One of the fears of larger build volumes is running out of material, which wastes time and expensive resin. There have been complex systems to overcome this, like metered pumps, sensors and such, but Anycubic has a brilliant and totally simple solution implemented in the Photon M3 Premium: a bigger tank!
The resin tank on the Photon M3 Premium is noticeably larger than typical resin tanks. The walls are about twice as high as expected, and thus it can contain quite a bit more resin. This means it is far less likely to run out of resin on larger print jobs, assuming you’ve filled up the resin tank.
As of today the Photon M3 Premium is marked for sale. Pricing is discounted for early buyers, with a US price of US$619 and a European price of €699.
The Anycubic Photon M3 Premium 3D printer will go on sale at 3:00AM EDT Nov 1st in the US market at a discounted price of US$619, and presale in Europe at 8:00AM CET Nov 1st with a discounted price of €699. Anycubic sales channels include:
