A group calling themselves OLO has launched a Kickstarter campaign for a really cool new device for smartphone owners – a practical 3D printer that uses the power of your device’s display to activate a chemical reaction in the provided polymer resins.
The process involves using the light rays from the display to activate the resin, which causes it to solidify. The process can vary in time, ranging from minutes to hours, depending on the complexity of the object you are printing.
The device can print anything you can imagine out of the provided resins that is the size of your smartphone’s display or smaller and it works with screens 5.8-inches or smaller. Obviously, the resin choices mean you’re limited to a specific printing material, which limits your production options, but you can buy specialized resins with special properties.
It also doesn't matter if you're using an Android smartphone, iOS smartphone, or Windows Phone smartphone; an app is going to be available for most major smartphones so almost anyone can take advantage of OLO.
For example, there are glow-in-the-dark resins, clear resins, colored resins, hard resins, and flexible resins. With these, you can get creative and build fascinating objects.
Watch it in action below:
The campaign sets the price of the 3D printer at $99, which is an affordable solution for anyone looking to make three-dimensional things with a device that could fit in a portable bag.
The sheer size of this 3D printer is going to give it a lot of double-takes, as many 3D printers you know of or have read about, are large and require a full-sized computer to operate. What’s more is the printer isn’t composed of all that many pieces, and just takes some every-day AA batteries from your cabinet.
As 3D printing continues to grow in popularity among a variety of uses, the OLO campaign is working to make it a more commercial commodity that everyday people can enjoy. Science continues to push boundaries and show the world what we can do with creative minds and physics.
Source: Kickstarter, YouTube