High Speed Morpheus 3D Printer Launching on Kickstarter With Breakthrough LIPS Technology

Winning over many already with “we know you are busy and don’t have time to become an expert on the 3D printer,” Team Owl Works is on track for success with their Morpheus resin 3D printer, about to launch on Kickstarter soon. We’ve been excited to see the launch of the Morpheus since first seeing it unveiled in June at the Inside 3D Printing Conference in Seoul.

This is a company dedicated to their SOHO (small office/home office) users, and the Morpheus will cater to their needs. How does Team Owl Works know this? Because they actually work with their SOHO users in South Korea all day long, fielding questions, requests, and completing orders. The greatest benefit is that in doing so, they created a new 3D printer for themselves. And now they will be bringing it to you.

The Morpheus is a 3D printer with awesome capabilities, super speed, and high quality–and if even if you are too busy to notice exactly what it’s made of and why it’s doing what it’s doing, you should be awfully happy with the results–and one thing that won’t escape you right up front is its aesthetic appeal with a glossy red exterior.

While the Morpheus 3D printer is fully capable of filling small production needs, this is a big printer–the new Mark 4 version is even bigger than the Mark 3 seen at Inside 3D Printing. At 13” x 7.1” x 11.8”, this is a powerful 3D printer allowing for the entire build area to be put to use–and offering “overwhelmingly higher” throughput than a DLP or FDM 3D printer. And while this might be a precision, high-speed tool, the one thing the team wants to stress is that it is hassle-free, allowing you to focus on creativity and not hardware and software tech issues.

“We have been trying to make the Morpheus as simple and easy as we can,” states the team on their Kickstarter launch preview. “It does not need any pre-calibration of image area. It does not need to set many values in slicer program. Just load an STL file and do slicing, then print it. It’s simple and intuitive.”

Working at high speeds, Team Owl says it takes anywhere from 10 to 30 seconds to solidify a 100um-thick-layer of resin material, and printing speed can be set at 0.4~1.4 inch/hour. In extensive testing and comparisons with other 3D printers, the Morpheus was found to be exponentially faster; in fact, they say it is actually 29 times faster than an FDM 3D printer and 16 times faster than DLP.

This is a company that can be excited about what they are bringing to the public because the facts–and the 3D models already produced–speak for themselves. Previously, I wasn’t planning on doing a 3D print of the Eiffel Tower any time soon, but the amount of detail and intricacy allowed for are spectacular and motivating; you won’t be just pumping out the prints you had in mind–rather, you’ll be able to work on the 3D printing projects of your dreams, and inspired to go further.

Not only that, in owning a Morpheus, you are the coolest kid on the block with all the new technology–in a resin 3D printer. You won’t just be 3D printing the Eiffel Tower, you’ll be producing it via light induced planar solidification (LIPS). The team credits LIPS with the quality allowing for the Morpheus to offer such an expansive build area without difficulties arising.

An alternative way to solidify 3D models as they are being fabricated, LIPS is obviously unique in comparison to other curing technologies. Using an LCD as a photo mask and UV LED as a planar light source, the solidification area is managed by controlling the LCD photomask. Other interesting features are:

• Digital control of photo patterns
• No optical projection
• Up and down scalability
• No dependency between scale and resolution
• Very uniform light intensity over the exposure area

“Simply, LIPS is a key to the new world of 3D printing,” states Team Owl Works.

With a product that’s meant to have a sense of SOHO permanence, Team Owl Works made a 3D printer built to last–and that includes the resin tank which is low-maintenance and does not need to be changed.

“We designed the Morpheus’s resin tank to last, so there’s no more replacing your printer’s resin tank or changing the PDMS layer,” states the team. “We’ve eliminated the frustrating PDMS process, so you can focus on making great prints without worrying about costly maintenance of the resin tank.”

While Team Owl is in the process of developing a custom resin, the 3D printer uses UV resin and is compatible with MakerJuice G+ & B9R-1-Cherry, among others.

Twenty supporters can get in on the ‘Super Early Owl’ offer with a pledge of $3799 (not including shipping or taxes) for the Morpheus 3D printer, including a liter of resin and one post-processing kit. Along with that, supporters are also invited to be a part of the Team Owl community, giving them access to communicating with the team and other members. Once that offer is gone, 40 supporters can still get in on the early bird-ish deal (‘Early Owl’) at $3999 and after that, at $4199 (for the ‘Last-Minute Owl’). The earliest Morpheus printers are expected to begin shipping to backers in December 2015. The ultimate Kickstarter goal is to raise $75K through the campaign.

Is this a 3D printer that appeals to your specific needs? Discuss in the Morpheus Resin 3D Printer forum thread over at 3DPB.com.