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by jonnycowboy 4112 days ago
Don't worry. IP protection is only for commercial ventures. Once the details are well understood by hobbyists, you will be able to build one yourself with no worries of infringement. That said, I'll hold my breath until somebody replicates the optically transparent - oxygen permeable membrane (I guess it is some kind of "holed" plastic or glass, with a goretex-like coating on one side).
1 comments

Correction - the oxygen permeable surface is Teflon AF 2400 which is available commerically: http://www.randomtechnologies.com/ The spacer (initial seperation between window and glass build plate) which determines resin thickness is 8 mil (200 um) aluminium shim stock. The projector looks like a UV projector: http://www.ti.com/devnet/docs/catalog/thirdpartydevtoolfolde...

That should be enough to get anybody started!

Too bad the Telfon for a 10"x10" bed, 100 um thick would be 750$ (10 grams at 72,000$/kg).

You forgot the resin, which is probably isn't just a regular UV-activated resin but could be their own patented mixture to achieve the accurate curing time they need. That's the harder part to DIY but I guess it's not impossible and there will be similar products soon.
The precise composition of the resin isn't specified, but the online material and methods state:

The ramp test patterns in Fig. 1C were printed with trimethylolpropane triacrylate (TMPTA) using the photoinitiator, diphenyl(2,4,6-trimethyl-benzoyl)phosphine oxide. Other objects were printed with a combination of monomers from Sartomer (CN2920 & CN981), TMPTA, and reactive diluents such as n-vinylpyrrolidone, isobornyl acrylate, and cyclohexane dimethanol di-vinyl ether. We also utilized the photoinitiators, phenylbis(2,4,6-trimethyl-benzoyl)phosphine oxide, 1-hydroxycyclohexyl phenyl ketone, and 2-benzyl-2-(dimethylamino)4morpholinobutyrophenone along with an assortment of dyes from Wikoff and Mayzo.

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/suppl/2015/03/16/science.a...

Well, a 10"x10" bed might be unreasonably expensive for now, but a 3" by 3" SLA printer like this has lots of potential applications, and would only cost around $75 for the Teflon AF 2400 (using your numbers).