Well, today’s the day that第一台智能手机3D打印机击中了Kickstarter. Will this be a day for the history e-books? Given the track record of 3D printing-related crowdfunding campaigns – Formlabs, the 3Doodler, and Wiivv Wearbles – I wouldn’t be surprised if the OLO campaign doesn’t reach its humble $80,000 goal in an hour, let alone a day. After all, the firm behind OLO,Solido3D, is asking $99 for a device that converts your phone into a 3D printer ($79 for early birds).
Olo是一个独特的优雅和强大的设备。在one hand, the 3D printer is simple in terms of actual mechanics. Seven components, including the injection molded shell and a single Z-axis motor, make up the printer itself. However, by relying on a user’s smartphone (iPhone, Android, or Windows Phone) as the soul of the system, OLO becomes incredibly powerful. Via the OLO smartphone app, masks of light are projected from the phone onto the printer’s resin tray, hardening each slice of an object as the OLO lifts it out of the vat layer by layer. In this way, OLO is almost like the Google Cardboard of 3D printing. It takes an ingenious tool that already exists, the smartphone, and uses it to power an entirely new application that opens up endless possibilities.
Why, then, hasn’t such a device hit the market before? Say, by using existing material for DLP or SLA 3D printers? The key ingredient that makes OLO possible is the resin. Unlike other photopolymer 3D printers, like the Form 2 or the Ember, OLO doesn’t rely on UV resin, which requires lasers or digital UV projectors to power the printing process. OLO relies on a new generation of resins that can be cured by ordinary white light. Developed by industry partners, OLO’s daylight-reactive material can be hardened into a 3D object using an ordinary smartphone.
现在,客户可以去卡Kickstarter campaign and purchase OLO, along with packages of this specialty resin, to begin 3D printing in a surprisingly wide variety of materials and colors: hard, white Solid 80 Poly; flexible Red 60 Poly; flexible Yellow 60 Poly; flexible Blue 60 Poly; hard Black 80 Poly; castable, grey Wax 30 Poly; translucent Clear 50 Poly; and the amber, elastic Soft 30 Poly resins. All of the materials can be rinsed under running water to be removed from the print bed. And, as you can tell from these names, OLO already has a pretty large materials portfolio, giving it a number of applications right out of the box, such as creating castable jewelry or flexible prototypes.
尽管这些工业应用使OLO能够在珠宝，牙科和电子市场中与高端机器竞争，但其拟议的用户友好性也考虑到消费者。Olo在四个AA电池上运行，除了智能手机以外，不需要外部计算机，使其完全无线。Solido3D甚至发明了3D电报的想法，在该电报中，用户可以将文件发送到印刷后才揭示的彼此。它的娇小尺寸为6.8“ x 4.5” x 5.8英寸使其可移植。
The print volume, though small, is nothing to balk at, however. At 3” x 5” x 2”, OLO prints objects only a bit smaller than the Autodesk Ember, which has a volume of about 2.5” x 1.6” x 5.3”. And it can achieve layer thicknesses as fine as 36 microns (0.036mm), with a resolution of 42 microns (0.042 mm). OLO’s makers say that the device also features auto-leveling and that the flexible build plate makes for easy print removal.
In response toour last article on OLO, readers had some concerns about some of the details about the project, for instance, related to the bottles of resin and the animated .gif used in the marketing materials. I reached out to the the makers of OLO, Filippo Moroni and Pietro Gabriele of Solido3D, to ask them why they had used a translucent bottles in their promos if their resin is daylight-sensitive. As it turns out, this was a marketing choice to showcase the colors of the resins. I learned that, in order to harden the material, the resin must be in close proximity to the light source. Keeping it in a translucent bottle posed no real problem for the video shoot, but for long-term preservation, OLO’s resins will actually be packaged in aluminum canisters.
我在上一篇文章中使用的动画.gif也没有像应有的那样准确地描述3D打印过程。此后，Olo团队将Olo公开视频实际上与iPhone 6合作。显然，该视频的风格少于该视频，该视频具有Olo 3D打印物体的切割，从外观上看，确实没有reason to believe that this isn’t the real deal.
Their credibility is further validated by the fact that Solid03D is a part of the largerFonderie Digitali这是一个意大利企业网络，其中还包括WASP和D Shape等重要且知名的业务。到目前为止，Solido3D团队似乎对这项技术非常开放，因此，在大多数情况下，如果您有任何疑问，我相信他们很乐意回答它们。
To me, the most exciting aspect of the technology is the fact that about one-third of the world’s population is already carrying a smartphone around in their pocket. 3D printing has been scoffed at by the likes of Terry Gou, CEO of Foxconn, and others who have called the technology a gimmick and assumed that it won’t make it into every home any day soon. OLO proves, however, that, for just $99, it could very well end up in the homes of anyone who owns a smartphone. As a result, OLO could be among the most democratizing 3D printers to have hit the market recently. Now, we’ll just have to wait for it to leap off ofKickstarter的页面并进入历史页面。
Update 3/21/2016, 10:26 am PST:当我撰写此更新时，项目上线大约6分钟后，它已经达到了Kickstarter目标的一半。我看到它在短短三分钟内就达到了3万美元。
Update 3/21/2016, 10:38 am PST:该活动几乎达到了目标，剩下约1.5万美元。
Update 3/21/2016, 10:51 am PST:好的，所以我错了他们实现目标需要多长时间。我说一个小时，实际上是三十分钟. I have to look into this further, but, I would say that this was the fastest-fulfilled Kickstarter campaign in history? And, if it keeps going like this, I wouldn’t be surprised if it becomes the most fulfilled in history, too.
