Zortrax Inkspire Fast and Precise Resin UV LCD Desktop 3D Printer With Ultrasonic Cleaner

Instrument of Precision

The UV LCD technology in Zortrax Inkspire relies on a high-resolution LCD screen with UV LED backlighting to solidify photopolymers layer by layer. With 50x50 microns XY resolution and 25 microns minimal layer height it is up to 9x more precise than leading SLA 3D printers. Because the entire layer is projected onto the photopolymer’s surface all at once, it is also up to 8x faster. Microscopic precision makes Zortrax Inkspire perfect for engineers, designers, jewelers or dental prosthetists. Due to the high speed of operation, the printer can work as a basic production unit in 3D printing farms offering low to medium scale manufacturing capabilities.

Meet the UV LCD Technology

Resin 3D printers typically work in either SLA (stereolithography) or DLP (digital light processing) technology. In SLA, the precision is constant, but the speed of operation is in inverse proportion to the amount of workspace taken by the model. It is so because an entire layer has to be drawn with a laser. In DLP, the speed of operation is constant, but the precision falls as the amount of used workspace increases. Because they are designed around digital projectors, popular DLP 3D printers can work with a relatively small pixel size provided the projected layer’s image is limited to a small part of their available workspaces. But when the projected image is enlarged to fill all of the workspace, pixels grow dramatically to 70 microns or larger. Zortrax UV LCD offers constant high speed and constant high XY resolution regardless of how much of the workspace is used.

In Zortrax UV LCD technology, UV light is processed in three distinct stages. First, it hits a polarizing film arranged along a horizontal axis. Only a part of the spectrum vibrating horizontally gets through. Such horizontally polarized light then goes into an array of liquid crystals. Each crystal can let it pass unchanged or rotate it 90 degrees. In the last stage, the light hits another polarizing film, this time arranged vertically. If a liquid crystal between those two films does not rotate the light, the pixel is off because the horizontally polarized light can’t get through the vertically polarized film. But if the light is rotated, it can pass through both films and the pixel is on.