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Nobel prints
Two prints from XYZprinting's Nobel sterolithography printer
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Nobel Printer
The XYZ Nobel Printer
In the wee small hours of this GMT morning, XYZprinting announced their latest two consumer desktop 3D printers both with 3D scanning capability. The da Vinci AiO series aims to be the 3D printer of choice for those looking for affordable, and fast desktop 3D printing and scanning. But XYZ aren’t finished on the cheaper end of consumer market, they’re after the prosumers too, as they announce a stereolithography printer.
The Nobel 1.0 matches the layer resolution of the popular Formlabs Form 1 printer at 25 microns. The Nobel is also marginally bigger than the Form 1 with a build size of 5 x 5 x 7.9 inches and marginally cheaper with a retail price expected to be $2,500 or less.
Desktop stereolithography machines are becoming increasingly popular as we saw at International CES 2014. Whereas Formlabs were out on their own in the consumer market last year, 2014 has seen the launch of FSL3D, Old World Labs, Lightforge, 3D Systems’ ProJet 1200, DWS’ XFab and now the Nobel 1.0.
Formlabs have a good two years head start in this prosumer marketplace and their road has not been without bumps, bumps that the likes of XYZprinting will no doubt encounter. However, with the some 1,400 R&D staff that their parent company has at their disposal ironing out those bumps may not prove so difficult.
One innovation that XYZprinting are claiming for the Nobel 1.0 is an improved resin-filling system so that users do not need to add resin throughout the process. This is a bugbear of many when running larger prints on these machines, prints can take in excess of 24 hours and having to check the resin levels constantly is a bit of a problem especially if leaving a printer over night.
We look forward to seeing more of the Nobel and we no doubt think we’ll be seeing even more of XYZprinting in the coming months.
