Zortrax Inkspire UV LCD 3D Printer

The Zortrax Inkspire offers microscopic precision and extreme details with it’s UV-LCD 3D Printer, adding to the already highly regarded Zortrax 3D Printer family.

Zortrax Inkspire is the polish company’s step into resin 3D Printing and expands their focus from FDM (or LPD as Zortrax calls it) into SLA/DLP, or UV LCD as Zortrax calls it.

The Zortrax Inkspire promises great additional production capacity and detail for product designers, engineers and all alike.

 Zortrax is well known for their M200 and M300 series that are very well made printers providing reliability and great 3D Printing results, specially in their own filaments. Zortax have a track record of reliable machines, specially in materias such as ABS, HIPS, PETG.

If you’re a fan of my YouTube videos you might have seen this Zortrax M200 review already.

 
 

 The Resin productivity

Zortrax Inkspire use a process called UV LCD, very similar to DLP resin 3D Printing. In UV LCD, UV-light is processed in three distinct stages.

  • First, it hits a polarizing film arranged along a horizontal axis. Only a part of the spectrum vibrating horizontally gets through.

  • Such horizontally polarized light then goes into an array of liquid crystals.Each crystal can let it pass unchanged or rotate it 90 degrees.

  • In the last stage, the light hits another polarizing film, this time arranged vertically.

If a liquid crystal between those two films does not rotate the light, the pixel is off because the horizontally polarized light can’t get through the vertically polarized film. But if the light is rotated, it can pass through both films and the pixel is on.

 What it boils down to; Productivity

What the UV LCD offers is printing speed and precision all over the print volume. Compared to laser-SLA, the UV LCD have the same precision over the whole build plate. Offering better productivity when printing arrays of small precise parts.

 

It’s this productivity, multiple parts next to each other that Zortrax is targeting with their Zortrax Inkspire. By having the same print time per layer, you can print 100 copies of the same part without loosing speed (as long as they fit on the build plate of course).

 

in the laser-SLA, you have to draw each part, resulting in a quite large drop in speed when printing several copies. With the Zortrax Inkspire you can calculate a print speed of up to 36 mm/h independent of how much the build plate is covered.

 

Zortrax use an example where a HDMI-cover can print 77 of them in 1 hour and 30 minutes. With a “small” array of 30 3D Printers, that would offer a monthly output of 360-500 000 parts a month, depending on working shifts.

 

With this calculation, Zortrax hope to inspire more flexible manufacturing in UV LCD 3D Printing and new opportunities for growing companies.

Smart Zortrax Inkspire

Zortrax Inkspire is on the outside a very typical “DLP” UV Resin 3D Printer construction with a moving build plate, dragging models out of the build tank. The mechanics is simple, only one motor moving the build plate with tiny steps upwards, creating the printers Z-axis.

 

The major benefit of the Zortrax Inkspire lies in it’s smart features and how they are streamlined from beginning to end.

A fully connected machine via Wifi and/or Ethernet offers great productivity from your desk. Using the Zortrax Z-Suite Inkspired you have access to smart supports, designed for resin 3D Printing.

 

With the Zortrax Resins you’re getting a reliable printing experience from the resin, via the slicer to your machine. That’s something that is incredible useful when the 3D Printer is used in production and time-sensitive projects.

Zortrax Z-Suite Inkspired

Let’s talk a bit more about the Z-Suite software and why it’s so important. With the new Zortrax Z-Suite Inkspired you’re getting great production friendly software with remote control and monitoring.

New support-features are specialized for resin 3D Printing and utilizes exposure-time settings to fine-tune your support for easier removal later on. You can build/modify your own support precisely to protect critical parts.

It all comes together to create a smooth experience from your model to finished production.

Compatible 3rd part resins

With the Zortrax Inkspire you’re all set to use Zortrax Resin Basic to get the best accuracy within the workflow. The Basic resins comes in several colors and offer great mechanical properties. Zortrax haven’t released much more info as of now.

Zortrax Inkspire is also compatible with 3rd party 405 nm resins, as used in most other SLA/DLP 3D Printers.  This will enable you to find a much wider spectrum of resins for your projects.

Zortrax Ultrasonic Cleaner

To maintain a high productivity you need fast cleaning of uncured resin. With the Zortrax Ultrasonic Cleaner you get a solution that does just that with, you guessed it, ultrasonic sound. By speeding up the cleaning you can post-cure parts faster and increase output.

Technical Specifications of Zortrax Inkspire

The Technical specification and features of the Zortrax Inkspire is impressive but nothing revolutionary:

Printing

  • Technology: UV LCD

  • Pixel Size: 50 microns (0,05 mm)

  • Layer thickness: 25,50, 100 microns

Device

  • Build Volume: 74x132x175mm (2.9 x 5.2 x 6.9 in)

  • Support: Mechanically removed – printed with the same material as the model

  • Light source: UV integrated light (wavelength 405 nm)

  • Connectivity: Wi-Fi, Ethernet, USB

  • Operating system: Android

  • Processor: Quad Core

  • Touchscreen: 4″ IPS 800 x 480

  • Available materials: Zortrax Photopolymer Resin Basic

  • External materials: Applicable

Software

  • Software bundle: Z-SUITE

  • Supported file types: .stl, .obj, .dxf, .3mf, .zcodex

  • Supported formats: .cws, .zcodex

  • Supported operating systems: Mac OS X / Windows 7 and newer versions

Weight and physical dimensions

  • Device (W x D x H): 210 x 210 x 420 mm (8.3 x 8.3 x 16.5 in)

  • Shipping box: 315 x 312 x 530 mm (12.4 x 12.3 x 20.9 in)

  • Shipping weight: 10.5 kg (23.1 lb)

  • Device weight*: 9.2 kg (20.3 lb)

  • Net weight: 7,6 kg (16,8 lb)

In the box

3D Printer, Z-SUITE, Starter Kit, Zortrax Photopolymer Resin Basic (500 ml)

Zortrax Inkspire Price

Zortrax Inkspire is an interesting UV LCD 3D Printing, letting Zortrax tap into a new segment. This complements the already appreciated semi-premium Zortrax M-series of 3D Printers and should provide a great experience for anyone already invested into Zortrax and their lineup of filament, printers and software.

With a price of $2,699 (retail) the Zortrax Inkspire is not cheap. It’s a long way from competing laser-SLA 3D Printers but needs to prove their reliability, precision and printing experience to not be forgotten in the expanding resin 3D printing market.

I’m for one looking forward to seeing more of this printer and hope that I can get a sample to review here and on the channel.