How much R&D effort and time would it take to get rid of the laser module and mirrors all together, and retrofit the Fom1 into a DLP SLA machine?
Thoughts?
I thought about this one a while ago, but you won’t be able to do it without make the form1 a whole lot bigger, clunkier looking. Kinda like the b9. You would have to put the projector on the bottom somehow, or in the back and reflect it off of the mirror. Not to mention, the software would have to be rewritten. Also, with the dlp, the print area would shrink considerably.
It would definitely need a new lower case. The firmware would need to be rewritten sure, but Preform would be fine. There is no reason the build area would need to be smaller (perhaps a slightly different aspect ration, but not smaller)
Preform is vector software. DLP is raster. Modifying the Form1 into DLP would most likely mean dumping all the electronics and software and putting back in something to drive the stepper for the Z and the peel motor…
Going from vector to raster is not an issue - the inverse would not be. I cant imagine rewriting the drivers for the z stepper and peel motors would be all that hard. In fact I cant really see what if anything would need to be written - the geometry is not changing, and both approaches require time for scanning (laser) and exposure (DLP) in between stepping/peeling. The new hardware is were I imagine is the bottle neck.