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OLO is the First Smartphone-powered 3D Printer (And We Want It)

Tuesday, March 22, 2016 6:34

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(Before It's News)

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I have no earthly idea how we walked down dark halways prior to having smartphones. Anyone remember? Surely it was too dark to even venture out or, my goodness, GO DOWN STAIRS?! Smartphones have changed things. Soon, we may be asking, “How did we 3D print things before smartphones?!” If the OLO 3D printer is half as good, and half as cool, as it looks, that question could come up soon rather than later.

The concept is simple. Using photopolymer technology, OLO is a type of Digital Light Processing (DLP) printer that uses the light of the phone to solidify liquid polymer. The OLO app displays a slice of the image, the liquid polymer hardens and the build plate moves up. This happens layer by layer until the print is complete. Smartphones have only been around about a decade, but DLP goes all the way back to 1981 when Hideo Kodama of Nagoya Municipal Industrial Research Institute published the first account of a 3D print created using photopolymer technology.

Designed and Engineered by Solido3D, digital factory in Rome, the pint-size printer, constructed of only seven parts, can produce objects 3″ x 5″ x 2″ (7.6 x 12.7 x 5 cm).

The OLO will run $99 with a free app available for iOS, Android and Windows. After only 33 minutes on Kickstarter, they have surpassed their funding goal of $88,000 and, at this rate, are sure to hit the big $1M, if not more.

The project is now live on Kickstarter, and though we’ve seen other suspect and long delayed 3D printers come out on the platform, Solido3D has a 15 year track record of delivering. You can check out some more of their tech here.

A Smartphone 3D Printer? Is this where 3D printing goes mainstream?