Most people are excited about 3D Printers, and practically everybody owns or wants a smartphone. OLO had the great idea of combining the two, and they created the concept of a smartphone 3D Printer!
I found out about OLO at New York Maker Faire when it was basically just a concept. The video on their website doesn’t reveal much information about the OLO either, so here is the only information I could gather…
The way the OLO works is it uses the display on your phone to cure the resin in the printer! So instead of a big fancy laser, all you do is place your phone into the printer. Then the phone will tell you how much resin to pour in, and it will start turning on its lights to cure the resin! Supposedly the phone will have enough power to cure the resin AND do the computing/slicing process. This means that OLO could take out all the fancy stuff, and they are planning to sell this printer for only $99! The only downside to this would be the time this process takes. Because a smartphone display isn’t nearly as powerful as an expensive laser, the curing process would take much longer. This is especially painful when it comes to 3D Printing, which is already a pretty slow process. The only other downside would be that this is still a “proof of concept”. However, they are planning to launch a Kickstarter campaign in October! But until then, we will have to wait for a phone to be able to create some epic 3d stuff.
Epic 3D Stuff 