3-D prototype printing moves to the desktop with Alaris30

The day is coming when we can dream something up and have a machine carve an image of it. In fact, that’s possible for industrial designers now, but at a fairly high cost.

Producing prototypes was once a laborious and expensive process. Now it can be done in machine shops, where you send a computer file to a machine that sculpts the prototype as needed. And now, you can use a computer to create a three-dimensional “print-out” of a prototype via the desktop.

Objet Geometries of Israel is launching today the Alaris30 Desktop 3-D printer, which can create high-quality 3-D models using a machine that looks like a big office copier. The Alaris30 is based on Objet’s PolyJet Photopolymer jetting technology, which creates prototypes with precise accuracy. It still costs around $40,000. But we can expect that to fall over time.

The company says it can be used to create smooth surfaces, complex geometries, small moving elements, fine details, and text that stands out from an object. The printer can deal with layers that are 28 microns thick, or thinner than a human hair. It can drop plastic in tiny droplets. You can build a bunch of small parts simultaneously. And you can leave the machine to do its tasks for as much as 36 hours.

It takes any 3-D computer-aided design file and can print it as a real object. The prints can take minutes to do. The whole idea is to shorten a product’s design cycle so that it can go through iterations more quickly and hit the market in a timely manner.

The machine jets photopolymer layers one at a time and then cures the plastic with ultraviolet light immediately. Those cured models can be handled easily and the gel-like support material can be removed with a water jet or by hand. The Alaris30 joins the company’s current Eden line of 3-D printers. Companies such as car designers, toy makers, shoe designers, and makers of other consumer goods use them.

The company was founded in 1998 and it has more than 50 patents on the technology. There are a variety of competitors out there. The most recent that we wrote about were Ponoko and Shapeways, a spin-off from Philips Electronics.