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Thingiverse church printed on Sedgwick DLP 3D printer
Low-cost, high-resolution — the maker's 3D printing dream. The Sedgwick might not sound sexy, but what's in a name?
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Sedgwick — an open-source DLP 3D printer
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Intricate Ball, Sedgwick style
Every DLP system needs (intricate) balls to make it in this game...
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Bust, Sedgwick style
Another familiar Thingiverse piece — thing1216 if you're interested
Sedgwick might sound like the surname of a Dickensian protagonist, but it is in fact the latest low-cost DLP 3D printing experiment on Kickstarter. Developed by Ron Light of Kansas City, the Sedgwick is everything you need to start DLP printing except for the DLP light source, which can be bought for a few hundred dollars (or pounds or Euro — just check eBay for a start!)
So if there is no DLP, what is there? Well the kit will be priced at under $500 in the US (a little more internationally when you add in pesky shipping costs) and contains:
- Software
- Laser cut bolt together frame (and bolts)
- Microcontroller
- Stepper motor and driver
- Carrier board for microcontroller and driver
- Pulleys and belt
- Linear slide
- Printing platform
- Optics
- Vat components
- Starter resin. The kit will include your first 2 Liters of resin!
So with some judicious purchasing decisions when it comes to your light source, you could easily be up and running for well under $1000 (or €800 or £650). The parts demonstrated on the kickstarter page certainly look the part, though the resolution in x-y is only down to 100µm compared the B9 Creators 50µm.
Interestingly, this is a top-down process, where most DLP systems — from the industrial EnvisionTEC systems to the B9 Creator — are bottom-up. This means that the mechanics of the process remain much simpler, but the process requires, in Ron's words: "a lot more resin."
The Sedgwick has a build size of 4 inches by 3 inches (about 100 mm x 77 mm) at this resolution, with a build speed of up to 5 mm per minute, according to Ron.
As with all these DLP printers (but especially one that uses more than average resin) the resin pricing will be all important — are you already using a DLP system, if so where do you get your resin from?
