Rapid Manufacturing

Imagine a full-sized metal container that can make any plastic part you want, instantly delivered to the point of need whether it be a factory or a hospital. That is the very ambitious aim of this project. To return manufacturing capabilities back to the UK and do it by using the high-tech new nature of 3D printing. It is based on recently invented technology invented here in the UK that makes 3D printing much faster and lower cost. It uses LCD screens that you use every day in your mobile, laptop or TV screen that creates a visual image that in turn hardens liquid to make a solid object by solidifying the specially made patented light sensitive resin.

This project will enable us, as a country, to make plastic items again in scale and at low cost- all created from this factory in a box. The factory can be delivered anywhere to manufacture any plastic items in scale at the point of need, as quickly as the 40ft container can be driven there. The factory will contain a 3D printer driven by an LCD screen-based 3D printer capable of producing plastics in the widest variety of properties (elastomeric, durable, hard and tough) with inline automatic post processing. These shipping containers will be pre-equipped, so they are ready to be moved to any location in the UK, loaded with different liquid resins, capable of providing an instant start up manufacturing solution to make any plastic item by just being transferred a digital file. This allows the UK to have an instant, on-demand source of manufactured items, but not subject to vagaries of supply from the Far East.

The patented concept of using LCD screens to print plastic was invented in the UK in 2014 and has been proven for many years now. There are now over half of million mobile phone sized LCD screen printers in use, nearly all of them made in China. Photocentric, who invented the technology, can make them in largest sizes yet commercialised and this is where the technology becomes an alternative to injection moulding. The recent crisis has for the first time enabled Photocentric to make tens of thousands of the same item and with it enabled us to have a vision of how the future of manufacturing in volume could look. Parts made instantly from digital files, not after months of expensive metal tooling fabrication.