Could Bambu Lab launch a UV printer?
UV printers are a bit different from 3D printers, and you can learn more in our previous story about this unusual, full-colour technology.
These devices are able to print truly full-colour textured objects, but are typically used by industry for packaging, labels, and other applications where some colour elements are added to an existing object.
The tech involves using an inkjet printhead to drop coloured photopolymer resin, which is cured layer by layer. It’s possible to build up a full RGB colour object in this way. Stratasys’ PolyJet technology does this, for example, but it is extremely expensive.
Recently, AnkerMake launched a cheap desktop UV printer, and it shockingly collected US$46M in Kickstarter orders. That triggered several other companies to get in on the UV action, and now it appears Bambu Lab might be following that pattern.
A report on the Star Market Daily from last week said that Bambu Lab had launched an internal development project to build a UV printer. They wrote (translated):
“Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily exclusively learned from Tuozhu Technology [the company that owns the Bambu Lab brand] that Tuozhu has launched a consumer-grade UV printer (ultraviolet light-curing inkjet printer) project and has planned more than a dozen job directions, covering complete research and development links from nozzle drive, waveform and ink path, to material verification and software collaboration. The first batch of recruitment positions has been launched on the official website.”
If true, this is a significant move by Bambu Lab. It is an entirely different type of 3D printing process, and one that is evidently very attractive: people want the ability to print full-colour objects, as shown by the extreme interest in recent Kickstarter campaigns.
One more interesting twist: Bambu Lab mentions “UV-LED inkjet printing machines” in a Canadian Trademark listing filed in 2023, well before any of this went down.
However, the same trademark listing also includes bioprinting, printing pens, thermoforming, CNC, die-cutting and many, many more making technologies. It seems that long ago the company was thinking quite wide in terms of potential future products.
But it’s not 3D printing, exactly. It’s more of a technology that adds colour elements to something else. It may be that Bambu Lab takes the route that HeyGears is following: combine 3D printing and UV printing in a single frame. That would potentially allow a device to print a large, full-colour object. Of course, there are many questions about how exactly that would work, but that will be what Bambu Lab’s new hires would be considering in the new project.
In the case of AnkerMake, the demand for their UV printer was so high that they literally changed the brand name of the company to EufyMake. They transformed into a company making UV printers.
I’m hoping Bambu Lab doesn’t go quite that far.
Via Star Market Daily (Chinese) and Canadian Trademark Database
