3D Resin Printing : DLP or SLA?

Resin printing comes in many forms, including LCD, LED, MSLA, SLA and of course DLP printing. These are essentially differing methods of zapping resin with an Ultraviolet light, be it with lasers or light emitting diodes. Ironically one of the oldest methods is DLP printing and it's still extremely popular in industry, where these printers can have six figure price tags.

Indeed, LED is what made resin printing cheaper and more accessible, leading to the rise in popularity as 3D printing became an affordable hobby. Unfortunately, as these were budget printers, accuracy was the main sacrifice, and whilst all the stated methods knocked spots off FDM printing, DLP was still the undisputed king of accurate pixels.

Pixels

It’s all about pixels. Just as your TV screen is made up of thousands of tiny squares of light, so also is the average 3D resin print created, through fine beams of light forming pixels.

The issue with SLA (and LCD, LED, MSLA, etc) is that the pixels are slightly fuzzy. This creates a blurred edge which in turn reduces quality.

DLPs produce much sharper pixels, with no fuzzy edges. A projector and mirror focus the UV light with considerably more accuracy than other types of resin printer. And as you’d guess, this means DLP printers are more expensive.

Budget DLP

However, Anycubic changed all that by developing the world’s first budget DLP printer, the Anycubic Photon Ultra. For me this changed budget resin printing forever as I quickly fell in love with the extreme accuracy of these machines.

Since then, there have been further budget end innovations and for me personally, right now there’s nothing to beat DLP technology when it comes to truly accurate printing. Check out my recommended budget DLP printers.