sparkmaker lcd screen quotation

SparkMaker is a resin printer, which was successfully funded through Kickstarter. It uses an LCD screen to cure the resin. The printer is ready-to-use from the box. It had been mentioned numerous times as one of the most affordable resin printers on the market as well as an easy to use the machine. Sparkmaker comes with its own slicing software and allows to use of third-party resins.

Most 3D printers today use the FFF (Fused Filament Fabrication) process, which is also sometimes referred to by the proprietary FDM (Fused Deposition Modeling) name. Those printers work by melting thermoplastic filament, and then extruding the plastic onto the build plate in layers. That process is quick, affordable, and produces relatively strong parts. But the SLA (Stereolithography) printing process generally yields higher quality results. SLA 3D printers used to be expensive, butthe SparkMaker Original is very affordable, and I recently tested one out.

The SparkMaker Original launched on Kickstarter back in 2017, and it’s still one of the most inexpensive SLA3D printerson the market. The SLA printing process works using photopolymer resin that hardens when it’s exposed to UV light. That light can come from lasers or from LEDs that are masked by an LCD screen. The latter method is cheaper, and is what the SparkMaker Original utilizes. The XY resolution is determined by the resolution of that LCD screen — 720p in this case.

On paper, the SparkMaker Original has some respectable specifications: a 98*55*125mm build volume, a 0.1mm XY resolution, a 0.02mm Z layer thickness, and a single layer print time of 8–15 seconds. There are a variety of resin types available depending on your intended applications, and the printer is very compact and desktop-friendly. But to find out if it’s actually any good, I had to test it out for myself.

The first thing I noticed is how small the SparkMaker Original is — the entire machine is roughly the size of a gallon jug. It came packaged securely in styrofoam with everything I needed to get started, including a bottle of standard LCD-BW resin. Best of all, no assembly was required. The only thing that needs to be done before printing is to level the build plate, which is a process that takes less than a minute.

After the build plate is leveled, you can use the free SparkStudio software to slicean STL 3D modeland copy it over to the included SD card. The software is very simple, and comes pre-configured for the SparkMaker Original and a handful of their resin types. The only downside is that you can only have one printable file on the SD card at any given time, as ithasto be called “print.wow” to work.

Once your model is sliced and on the SD card, you can insert it back into the 3D printer. Then follow the proper safety precautions to fill the reservoir with resin — it’s toxic, so be very careful and wear gloves and safety glasses. Strangely, the power switch is on the cord coming from the power supply, and there is no switch on the machine itself. Once it’s on, you just push the dial in to start the print. There is no screen, no way to select specific files, and no way to connect the printer to you computer.

For one last test, I printed the sphere below. This one was printed on “fast” settings. This turned out well, likely because there were no fine details. This model is ideal for the smooth surfaces that the SparkMaker Original seems to want to produce.

But what if quality is less important to you than reliability? Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be a strong point here either. Every other print job I tried completely failed. That was because the LCD window would become covered in a layer of semi-cured resin. In order to get a successful print, I had to completely empty the reservoir and then carefully peel off that layer of resin. That’s a tricky job considering the toxicity of the resin.

Finally, I have some nitpicks about the mechanical design of the machine. The most glaring is that the top of the build plate is completely flat, so resin will pool there. Virtually every other SLA printer has the top of the build plate sloped to avoid that, but it seems SparkMaker was cutting costs here. The protective UV-resistant cover also doesn’t have anything to hold it in place, so a bump can push it into the build plate.

At the end of the day, I can’t recommend the SparkMaker Original with a good conscience. It’s very affordable at just $249 (even less with a coupon), but there are other models on the market at comparable price points with better specifications, additional features, and more favorable reviews.

About a year later they even came out with an upgraded version, the Sparkmaker FHD, that increased the print resolution from 480p to 1080p, a major and needed jump in fidelity.

The Sparkmaker Original, in addition to having a really low resolution display, only understands black and white input images. So, natively, there is no way to feed it anti-aliased source images to smooth out the large pixels.

Sparkmaker FHD is the new and improved version of this printer and in addition to a higher resolution screen it is also equipped with a more powerful UV backlight.

Unfortunately, this backlight produces a very uneven exposure across the screen with hotspots directly under the LEDs as well as areas where the light cones overlap.

So in theory, if we can measure the intensity of the UV light that hits the screen at each pixel, we could use the LCD screen to compensate this overexposure and normalize the light.

The SparkMaker began life as a $99 Kickstarter, which I was understandably skeptical of. Not only was that a ludicrously cheap price for a 3D printer, it was absolutely preposterous for an SLA 3D printer – which was previously the domain of much more expensive industrial printers. It"s now in production, shipping to backers, and available for just shy of $300 from OGadget for everyone else – but is it worth it?

An SLA (or StereoLithography Apparatus) printer uses photosensitive resin as the raw material (a liquid), which solidifies when exposed to UV light. This can come either from a moving UV laser, or in the case of the SparkMaker, UV LEDs and an LCD screen to mask off each layer. As the print solidifies, it"s pulled out of the resin tank.

The SparkMaker has a total build area of around 4 x 2.2 x 5 inches (102 x 56 x 125 mm). The unit itself measures just under 11 inches (275 mm) tall with a diameter of 6.5 inches (165 mm). It"s compact, and looks quite neat on your desktop. Everything is enclosed in the large translucent red cover, though this isn"t fixed in any way, it just sits on the base.

Also in terms of safety (yep, there"s more) – don"t power on at the plug socket until you"ve inserted the DC power jack into the unit, or you"ll get literally sparks. That"s right, the SparkMaker makes sparks when it"s plugged in. You couldn"t make this up if you tried.

Using the SparkMaker is (frustratingly) simple. The only method of getting a print onto the device is through the included SD card. It can only hold a single print at a time, so you"ll need to head back to a PC to transfer another file over. There is no USB connection or Ethernet port, and it can"t be interfaced with Octoprint. When you"re ready to print, fill the resin vat with your choice of resin, to approximately 1/4 inch (6mm) deep, put the cover on, and press the single button. The print bed will be lowered into the vat, and begin printing. Cleanup and post-processing is lot more effort, though.

If you want to slice your own models, you"ll need to download the Windows-only (at the time of writing, though a Mac OS version is promised) custom software, called SparkStudio. This includes settings specific to the printer and type of resins, and will output a "print.wow" file. The files are around 50-100MB in my experience, which is larger than your typical G-code file. G-Code files for FDM printers are really just text commands that describe movements of the print head. I suspect the SLA files are larger because they contain thousands of "images" for what must be displayed on the LCD screen and cured on each layer, effectively a little video file.

SparkMaker offers a range of resins at around $50-80 for 500g. The cost per gram is significantly higher than plastic filaments (at least five times as much), though the objects you print will be smaller. As mentioned, you"ll need 99% Isopropyl Alcohol to clean the prints and resin vat after each print. However, SparkMaker have produced an alternative resin (LCD-W), which can be cleaned up with just water. This is a great option that avoids noxious smells and makes the whole experience a bit safer and cleaner. The prints made of LCD-W tend to be quite brittle, however, so it isn"t quite the ideal solution. The resins are clear, but can be tinted with special color mixes.

Sadly, after extensive testing with both LCD-W and LCD-E ("Elastic") resin, using either the pre-sliced models that SparkMaker offer or custom sliced using their software, we were unable to get a fully successful print out of the device. This is as far as we got with a Hero Forge sample mini – you can see the supports failed much earlier, so the rest of the model didn"t really have a chance:

Unfortunately, I just can"t recommend the SparkMaker – not at the moment anyway. The closed Facebook group is full of posts from people experiencing similar frustrations. Those that have had success appear to be both replacing the FEP film out of the box, and doing a modification to bring the LCD screen closer to the bed. The latest announcement indicates that SparkMaker have made some hardware improvements for pre-orders that haven"t yet shipping, so that"s a good sign the issues have been identified. If you order now, you may not face the same problems. However, we can obviously only report on our experience.

In a break to the norm, we won"t be running a giveaway for the SparkMaker: you"d spend more on consumables and accessories than you"d get out of it. I"ll be following the modding process, replacing the FEP sheet, keeping an eye on software updates, and trying again. If results improve, I"ll update this review accordingly.

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