Another day, another LCD-based resin 3D printer, right? Wrong? The Phrozen Sonic – on paper at least – appears to be doing something quite different in order to achieve the claimed half-second layer cure times.

Monochrome LCD

To begin, the Sonic features what Phrozen refers to as a mono-LCD – an alternative form of LCD masking screen that is purported to be more transparent than the LCDs currently commonly used in similar printers. This transparency – allowing more UV light to pass through it – in combination with the latest iteration of Phrozen’s powerful ParaLED UV light engine contribute to what appear to be unbelievably quick layer cure times.

It is claimed that this new panel is harder wearing and longer-lasting than conventional panels, citing a lifetime of 2,000 hours. If so, that would have it lasting some four times longer than competing printers’ LCDs. There’s no word yet on the expense of replacing a mono-LCD, though, so we’ll reserve judgment on whether this is as spectacular as sounds at face value.

Quality

In aiming for speed with the mono LCD, Phrozen appears to be sacrificing a small degree of detail, with the Phrozen Sonic featuring an XY resolution of 62-microns – down from the 47-microns found on the original Phrozen Shuffle.

For some professions and use cases, we expect that to be small change for what could a wickedly fast printer.

Speed

The documentation swirling around the printer’s announcement suggests a layer cure time as fast as 0.5 seconds per layer (0.05 mm layer height), which would be magnitudes quicker than the masking LCD printers commonly available today.

Printing at a particular resolution, the company claims a print speed of 60 mm per hour.

The following YouTube video doesn’t show all that much since you don’t a view on the height of the print, but it does give a slight impression of the possible print speed achievable with the Sonic.

Build Volume

As stated above, the Phrozen Sonic appears to be built on the foundation of the Phrozen Shuffle, meaning a linear rail-guided Z-axis arm, probably (but not confirmed) running up and down a heavy-duty ball screw.

Attached to the said arm is a print plate measuring out at 120 x 68 mm, with 170 mm of printable space available through the Z-axis.

Operation

The Phrozen Sonic will be running on Phrozen’s Phrozen OS which, last we saw, was based on NanoDLP. Model preparation comes courtesy of the company’s PZSlice Pro software, which we have yet to see in action. Said to be based on premium slicer Formware (in an official capacity, judging by Formware’s inclusion on Phrozen slides detailing the software side of things), we would expect to see some advanced features beyond the typical support generation and hollowing.

Having used the basic PZSlice with the Phrozen Transform (a review-in-progress, for those that care), things are certainly pointing in the right direction, with preconfigured settings for Phrozen’s and generally slick operation.