I am just a bit sad that this is going to be a commercial venture protected by Intellectual Property. IP is the reason why filament extrusion is so widespread and cheap for DIYers compared to SLA.
I agree, and it is sad. Well, in 20 years when the patent expires we can finally get some progress on this tech, just like when the patents on filament extrusion expired the costs went down two orders of magnitude and print speed and quality up one order of magnitude in the space of a couple years. Until then it's going to stagnate.
20 fucking years. I'm sorry but this is so hopelessly obsolete, it is outrageous. Is there any hope for this to be universally reduced to say 5 years in the foreseeable future?
Just a point here that since two of the primary founders / inventors are on the faculty of UNC Chapel Hill, this technology likely arose from work in their labs on campus. That means it could fall under the UNC Patent Policy [1].
It would then be up to UNC to make the determination on how to best protect the IP and commercialize it. Universities have large patent budgets and do their best to protect their IP until suitable commercial partners can found to take over the patent costs and bring the technology to market.
If it weren't for patents, they likely wouldn't have spent $40million developing it. Someone would reverse engineer it and then launch a Kickstarter and sell it without having to spend the R&D cost.
you can certainly do it as DIYer but to ameliorate it and commercialize it you are going to deal with patenting. SLA patents just recently started to expire and this has already created an explosion of new developments. see here for instance http://qz.com/106483/3d-printing-will-explode-in-2014-thanks...
you may also want to check to formlabs last year, and their litigation on the patenting.
Don't worry. IP protection is only for commercial ventures. Once the details are well understood by hobbyists, you will be able to build one yourself with no worries of infringement.
That said, I'll hold my breath until somebody replicates the optically transparent - oxygen permeable membrane (I guess it is some kind of "holed" plastic or glass, with a goretex-like coating on one side).
You forgot the resin, which is probably isn't just a regular UV-activated resin but could be their own patented mixture to achieve the accurate curing time they need.
That's the harder part to DIY but I guess it's not impossible and there will be similar products soon.
The precise composition of the resin isn't specified, but the online material and methods state:
The ramp test patterns in Fig. 1C were printed with trimethylolpropane triacrylate (TMPTA) using the photoinitiator, diphenyl(2,4,6-trimethyl-benzoyl)phosphine oxide. Other objects were printed with a combination of monomers from Sartomer (CN2920 & CN981), TMPTA, and reactive diluents such as n-vinylpyrrolidone, isobornyl acrylate, and cyclohexane dimethanol di-vinyl ether. We also utilized the photoinitiators, phenylbis(2,4,6-trimethyl-benzoyl)phosphine oxide, 1-hydroxycyclohexyl phenyl ketone, and 2-benzyl-2-(dimethylamino)4morpholinobutyrophenone along with an assortment of dyes from Wikoff and Mayzo.
Well, a 10"x10" bed might be unreasonably expensive for now, but a 3" by 3" SLA printer like this has lots of potential applications, and would only cost around $75 for the Teflon AF 2400 (using your numbers).
