Davide Marin · CLIENT: Lumi Industries
LumiBee is a compact resin 3D printer designed for home use. The printer uses light curable liquid resin and the screen of a mobile phone, which is inserted inside the device, as the light source. A control application slices the digital model into horizontal sections that are shown on the screen, and the light solidifies the resin layer by layer. About 95 percent of the parts of LumiBee can be produced with a low cost filament 3D printer. The structure is modular, and each segment has a specific function and can be customized.
Press Kit
- Unique Properties
- The LumiBEE is a unique compact 3D Printer that uses photosensitive liquid resin. It has been designed so that 95% of its parts can be printed with a Filament 3D home Printer. The LumiBee is also particular since it uses the screen of a mobile phone, inserted inside, to transform the liquid resin into a three-dimensional object. Its structure is modular, where segments, each with a specific function, can be modified and customized.
- Dimensions & Packaging
- Size approx. 120 x 120 x140 mm.
- Tags
- 3d printer, DIY, 3d printable, open source, 3d printing
- Production Technology
- The 95% of the parts of the LumiBee 3D Printer can be produced with an FFM 3D printer. This means that the production of the LumiBee is very lean. It can be sold as a ready to use product, or as an assembly kit, or the user can even just purchase the digital files and produce the parts at home, as long as he/she has access to another low cost 3d printer. Many schools, maker spaces and laboratory offer the use of a 3d printer for free or for a low fee, so this is also an option for the user who wants to just buy the digital files.
- Design Challenge
- One of the challenges was to optimize the design so that the production of the parts of the Lumibee (that are 3D printed) takes as less time as possible. Normally medium and big sized 3d printed parts take hours to be fabricated, so we went through many different iterations to minimize the manufacturing time.
- Project Duration
- The project started in February 2019 and was exhibited in November at the Frankfurt Messe, during FormNext 2019 as part of the PurMundus exhibition.
- Operation Flow
- The user downloads the CAD files of the parts that build up the LumiBee. With a desktop FFF 3D Printer, the parts are physically fabricated. Then the LumiBee is assembled. The user downloads the controlling App on a smartphone. Then, the 3D model that will be printed is opened in the app, and sliced in hundreds of horizontal sections, that are projected on the screen. The phone is inserted into the LumiBee, under a vat of liquid resin. The light of the screen solidifies the resin and creates the 3D part.
- Research
- The goal of this project studied the feasibility of using the light emitted from screen of a smartphone, without modifications, to induce a chemical reaction where, in this case, a liquid is turned into a solid, in a small tank of liquid resin. A tray inside the tank moves vertically, 0.1mm at a time. A 3D model file is opened in the App on the smartphone, and 3D printed with this device, controlled via Bluetooth. Several prototypes have been built and tested, and the project proved to be working.
- Inspiration
- This project was born with the aim of making 3D Photosensitive resin printing affordable. Daylight resin for 3D printing allows most cellphones to be used as a light source to polymerize the resin. This allows us to give a second life to slightly outdated cellphones. I decided to design a very compact 3D printer that uses this technology, and to make the production process as lean as possible, the LumiBee can be bought as a kit or built by anyone with access to another home 3D printer.
- Image Credits
- All images: Marin Davide photographer, 2019/2020
- Patents
- The project is published with Open Source under GNU General Public License v3.0.
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