Here’s what you should know about Nexa3D’s new industrial-size resin 3D printer, Lenovo’s most powerful new laptop, and Asus’s latest portable display.
Zen Master Unmon said: “The world is vast and wide. Why do you put on your robes at the sound of a bell?”
We can’t answer this kōan, but if Master Unmon had asked what three new pieces of hardware every engineer should know about, we’d have already reached nirvana.
Reach nirvana yourself by watching this Tech Check as a video.
Nexa3D’s next 3D printer
Last year we called Nexa3D’s XiP 3D printer a gateway to professional 3D printing, and this month at Rapid+TCT Nexa3D showed us the other side of that gate: the XiP Pro.
The Nexa3D XiP Pro is an industrial-grade resin 3D printer that uses Nexa3D’s proprietary Lubricant Sublayer Photo-curing (LSPc) process, which the company says is 20 times faster than other vat polymerization processes. That speed doesn’t come at the cost of part quality—Nexa3D says the XiP Pro delivers superb surface quality with high accuracy and dimensional stability.
We had high praise for the original XiP, and the XiP Pro takes its best qualities and makes them bigger and better. The XiP Pro has a much larger 19.5 liter build volume (compared to 4.5 liters for the XiP), a higher 7K LCD resolution (compared to 4K), a smaller 46µm pixel size (compared to 52µm), and a larger 10-inch touchscreen interface (compared to 5.5 inches). The XiP Pro supports over 19 types of photopolymer resin and counting.
Altogether, Nexa3D is touting the XiP Pro as “a new breed of industrial resin 3D printing” capable of providing high throughput and production quality at a low operating cost. The new 3D printer is available directly from Nexa3D and costs $59,995 (not including the required service and software fees).
Lenovo refreshes its most powerful ThinkPad
One of the most powerful engineering laptops, the Lenovo ThinkPad P16, has entered its second incarnation. The ThinkPad P16 Gen 2 debuted among three new ThinkStation desktops and five new ThinkPad laptops in Lenovo’s 2023 workstation lineup.
The ThinkPad P16 Gen 2 is a 16-inch powerhouse that features the latest processors in Lenovo’s new signature grey chassis with the bright red flourish. The new laptop is configurable with 13th-Gen Intel Core HX-Series processors (Intel’s most powerful mobile chips) and up to the NVIDIA RTX 5000 Ada Generation mobile GPU (NVIDIA’s most powerful mobile chip) with 16GB of GDDR6 VRAM.
Even more impressive is the amount of memory the ThinkPad P16 Gen 2 supports: up to 192GB of DDR5 memory across four SoDIMM slots—overkill for many, but just the right amount of kill for users that routinely work with massive datasets. For those with a lot of data to store, the new laptop offers up to 8TB of PCIe Gen 5 storage.
The second-gen ThinkPad P16 can be equipped with a 3840×2400 pixel OLED touch display and optional 4G LTE connectivity (though the lack of 5G seems a bit odd for 2023). The laptop provides a solid selection of ports including two Thunderbolt 4, two USB-A, one USB-C, one HDMI, an SD card reader and an audio jack (plus an optional smart card reader). It’s got a hefty 94Wh battery to keep the electrons flowing.
The ThinkPad P16 Gen 2 will be available in May 2023, though Lenovo hasn’t yet announced the starting price.
A screen fit for the Buddha
It’s not always easy to feel Zen, but it is easy to see it with Asus’s latest portable screen, the ZenScreen MB16QHG. The 16-inch display pairs a 2560×1600 resolution (a 16:10 aspect ratio) with a 120Hz refresh rate for a crisp and smooth screen on the go.
Like any good portable screen, the ZenScreen is both slim and light. It tapers to 7mm at its edges and weighs 2.6lbs (1.2kg). It also has a few features that make it a versatile traveling companion, including an L-shaped hinge that allows users to adjust the screen angle or lay it flat on a table. It also works in both portrait and landscape mode, and switches between them dynamically when connected to a Windows PC. A built-in socket allows the ZenScreen to be mounted to a standard tripod stand.
The ZenScreen MB16QHG also has dual USB-C ports—one on each side—so the cable never gets in the way of your optimal setup. The portable display also provides an HDMI port and 3.5mm audio jack.
Another reason to like the ZenScreen is its 100 percent DCI-P3 color gamut and 500 nits of brightness—not as bright as premium smartphone, but probably brighter than the laptop you’d connect it to. For a portable screen, you can’t ask for much more than that. Asus has yet to announce the pricing and availability of the new display.
