carbon3d's CLIP: the MTV of 3D printing? a bouncing and dripping Sagrada Familia?

These videos may make you reconsider 3d printing.

If you've already handled 3d-printed objects, you know how easily they can break, even if you don't let them fall. Yes you can give them an illusion of flexibility through structural gimmicks, but this elastomer is truly something different:



Remember the drilling sound of ye olde inkjet printers, remember the relief the first time you used laser printing? That sleek, seamless, silent efficiency? I felt a bit the same watching this CLIP (yeah, timelapses do help, but it took only 7 mn to 'print' that Eiffel Tower):

 

These dripping structures reminded me of Antoni Gaudi's inverted force models for his Sagrada Familia: instead of piling up layers of bricks, forms seem to emerge naturally...

Gaudi's force models

... except they don't emerge from thin air, but from liquid, the L in carbon3d's CLIP technology (Continuous Liquid Interface Production).

If carbon3d say that they do true 3D printing, while 'traditional' technologies multiply 2D layers, it looks as if they bend 2D, pull it up like on Sketchup. And forget about those limited cubic printers...

This is how it actually works:



Again, carbon3d video killed the 3D printer stars. And again, remember: that fascination watching, back in 1991, Robert Patrick rise up from the tiled floor in Terminator 2? You new reality was different, but sci-fi movies suddenly got much cooler:

Anyway, congratulations to Joseph DeSimone and his teams. carbon3d's CEO "is one of less than twenty individuals who have been elected to all three branches of the National Academies: Institute of Medicine, National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering". Maybe the 3d in his brand stand for 3 deans.

You can watch his TED talk of last March:




mot-bile 2015