Autodesk Invests in Carbon3D

While the idea may be decades old, additive manufacturing (AM) has developed rapidly in the last five years. Business and research has gone from using AM mainly for prototyping or the occasional spare part, to full-scale production in multiple materials. You kind of have to pay attention to what’s going on in AM to keep up.

It seems that someone at Autodesk is paying attention. The company recently decided to invest $10 million into Carbon3D from the Spark Investment Fund. The fund had been set up to demonstrate Autodesk’s dedication to launching the Spark program, including the Ember, as a tool for research and development.

Grown, not built, an object begins to emerge from the resin pool. Courtesy of Carbon3D

“We started the Spark Investment Fund to help drive the 3D printing industry forward,” said Carl Bass, Autodesk president and CEO. “Carbon3D embodies the innovation that’s required to change how products are made. The incredible speed of its CLIP technology makes 3D printing accessible for true manufacturing, beyond the prototyping and the one-offs we see it being used for now.”

For the link shy, Carbon3D has developed an AM system that uses a proprietary process the company has dubbed CLIP. CLIP stands for continuous liquid interface production technology and operates through photo polymerization. Unlike standard stereolithography, which builds an object one layer at a time by curing the topmost layer of a resin pool, CLIP projects light through the pool, encouraging the object to grow together simultaneously.

The result of CLIP is a 3D object that, according to Carbon3D, can be built up to 100 times faster than competing AM systems, all without leaving strata lines in a finished build.

“By working at the intersection of hardware, software and molecular science, we are aiming to fundamentally address the issues that have held 3D printing back from becoming a manufacturing process,” said Dr. Joseph DeSimone, CEO and co-founder, Carbon3D. “We’re honored to have an industry powerhouse like Autodesk recognize the transformative nature of our CLIP technology and engage with us in such a significant way.”

Below you’ll find a TED Talk by Carbon3D’s DeSimone.

Source: Autodesk