3D Holographic Printer with no Moveable Parts (full image printed in seconds)!

[gravityblock]

3D Holographic Printer with no Moveable Parts (full image printed in seconds)!

A device which generates a 3D holographic image of the part to be copied, then prints the full 3D holographic image in seconds by using a transparent gel that hardens when activated by light or sound without any moving parts.  This is a 3D printer on steroids, and at a much lower cost than conventional 3D printers.  Here's a video demonstrating how to easily generate the 3D holographic image.  There's a better method than the one shown in the video, without using parabolic mirrors.  The advantage of this other method is the focal point can be outside of the working area and is cheaper to produce.  I'll post this other method later.  We can take this one step forward by placing a transparent gel where the 3D holographic image is generated.  The light which makes up this 3D holographic image will activate, cure, and harden the gel in seconds leaving behind a printed copy of the part.  The printed part will be an extremely high resolution copy of the original part.  A dental curing light can be used, and is a piece of dental equipment that is used for polymerization of light cure resin based composites.  Light-activated resins are one-part translucent polymers that cure and quickly harden when exposed to a specific light spectrum.  The resin remains liquid (thick, like syrup or honey) under normal indoor lighting which allows the user to work with the material until curing is desired by using a dental curing light or other similar activation techniques.  After curing, light-activated resin is denser than air-cured resins due to its inherent chemistry and because no mixing is required that might introduce air bubbles.  Dentists have used visible-light activated resins for decades.  Software isn't required either.

Gravock

[DreamThinkBuild]

Hi Gravoc,

That is really cool. It's amazing how fast the technology is evolving. Pretty soon we'll have GPS contour printers that can build entire buildings, layer by layer with built-in conduits for wiring and plumbing.

Looks like someone did this already in the past.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumapunku

[gravityblock]

There's a better method than the one shown in the video, without using parabolic mirrors.  The advantage of this other method is the focal point can be outside of the working area and is cheaper to produce.  I'll post this other method later.

Below is a description of a video on the "Double Cylindrical Point Focus principle" discovered in 1976.  Here's a detailed PDF publication on the "Double Cylindrical Point Focus Principle" which may help with the proper dimensions of the two mirrors. MirrorPlex, mirrored plexi-glass, or thin plastic mirror sheets can bend. Also, any material which can bend could be covered with reflective tape, mylar foil, etc.

The parabola has the well-known property of reflecting axis-parallel rays to a point YouTube - Parabola-Focal-Ray-Reflect

If we rotate the parabola around its axis, we create a parabolic disc, which has the well-known property of reflecting parallel rays (= planar wave-fronts) that are incident along the axis direction of the disc to a point. An animation that shows this process is available at YouTube - Parabolic Disc PointFocus

We can avoid the "astronomical costs" associated with creating (= casting) a large parabolic disc by bending two flat mirror sheets in the shape of parabolic cylinders to create an exact point focus. This is due to the

Double Cylindrical Point Focus principle:

If the focal line of the first cylinder is identical to the generating line of the parabola that is the intersection of the second cylinder with a plane perpendicular to its axis, then the incoming rays will be reflected to a perfect point.

For a proof of the DCPF principle, see http://tinyurl.com/595fsf and for an animation see YouTube - Double-Cylindrical PointFocus - animation

The DCPF principle was discovered on November 16, 1976 by Ambjörn Naeve http://tinyurl.com/5gbz8j and is demonstrated in this video by Tomas Elofsson, Gusum, Sweden, in July 1989.

Besides being easier than the ordinary parabolic disc to build in large sizes (avoiding "astronomical costs"), the DCPF has the advantage that the focal point can be placed outside of the solar influx area, where it is freely available to do work.
See http://tinyurl.com/69pusb

The DCPF also has the advantage that the number of planar approximator strips of fixed width grows LINEARLY with the overall size (since one dimension is unaffected) instead of QUADRATICALLY, as with an ordinary parabolic disc. For a comparison, see http://tinyurl.com/6xmpua and YouTube - The Archimedes Death Ray Lesson

Tuning the primary mirror:
http://tinyurl.com/5eqz3b

Tuning the secondary mirror:
http://tinyurl.com/6qt5ud

Using these DC PointFocusing mirrors, we have melted limestone (2560 deg C) in free air.
See http://tinyurl.com/6jsfd4

A VR-based lecture from October 2000 can be found at YouTube - CyberMath: PointFocus This lecture was created using CyberMath and DIVE The Dive Home Page

For more films and interactive material,
see Redirecting...
and for the story behind the DC PointFocus,
see PointFocus (This page has information on the holograms which is related to the DCPF principal).

[gravityblock]

A 3D holographic multiplex printer (movie projector) has been developed using the DCPF principal. It was called the Mark IV Printer and is described in an article of Holosphere. The Mark IV printed to a film for recording and playback of the hologram, instead of using a light activated resin to produce a physical 3D copy of the hologram. What we want to do is slightly different than the Mark IV and should be much less complicated. The Mark IV demonstrates the DCPF's ability to generate 3D holograms.  With the DCPF principal, the 3D hologram generated can be seen from all directions, including the sides and underneath the hologram because the focal point can be outside and away from the working area.

Gravock

[DreamThinkBuild]

Hi Gravock,

Thank you for all the links, some are malformed, but was still able to get to read through them.

So the idea is you take a glass aquarium like box and fill it with a clear polymer gel. Then from each of the sides you project a holograph into it allowing it to set where it intersects from the DCPF technique(?)

I'm no expert in holography so I'm trying to understand.

How do you keep an object from falling through the liquid or would you also holographically project a support grid?

In a large complicated model would it be able to evenly cure to the center?

I really like this idea it would allow models to built to quickly with a reduction in all the mechanical requirements. This would allow scaling from a small cup model all the way up to an aquarium sized model. Other polymers are heat cured so it might be possible to project infrared to cure those.

Just trying to get a simple small cube or even a 3D map (projective displacement) to print using this technique would be a breakthrough. From there the sky is the limit. Are you working on a prototype?