Azul 3D’s Ocean 3D Printer Offers Larger Streamlined Production Platform

Azul 3D’s Ocean printing platform is the company’s largest and most productive area-wide polymer 3D printing solution. Developed in collaboration with an industry partner, Ocean features a large 812 × 812-mm build area and 300-mm/hr. build speed that leverages Azul 3D’s proprietary, modular high-area rapid printing (HARP) technology. 

HARP is the company’s version of stereolithographic (SLA) printing that converts liquid plastic into solid objects using ultraviolet light. The company says this latest printer can open the door to new partnerships with industry leaders aiming to take advantage of these capabilities to disrupt their own markets.

HARP employs a liquid interface that remains molecularly flat across the entire build area during printing, enabling high precision across the largest parts. The architecture actively removes heat from the curing reaction, enabling thermal consistency and process stability for high-volume manufacturing. With its modular optical engine, Ocean maintains the full 72-micron high resolution and intensity digital light processing (DLP) projection of its predecessor, the Lake printer. 

“Our strategy is to empower the future of digital manufacturing,” says John Hartner, Azul 3D CEO. “The Ocean platform is a new-to-industry capability, with the opportunity to enable new high-volume products and supply chains.”

With the ability to produce ultrafine features and harness build speeds of over 300 mm per hour, the Ocean is said to represent a new economic paradigm for polymer production. In the clean tech sector, its printed structures offer new engineering possibilities to improve performance of large-scale filters and membranes for carbon capture and water treatment.

In collaboration with Dr. Devin Roach at Oregon State University, Azul 3D is investigating and testing the application of functional coatings to printed surfaces, including novel carbon-sorbent materials pioneered by the Nyman research group at Oregon State.