3D printing with light, in Nature and Science last week - video and GIF

[sossol]

3d printing by solidifying resin with a laser is not new. I watched such a machine at work at a now-defunct Industrial Design/rapid prototyping company in Indianapolis when I was in college (I graduated in 1998). The laser was above a basin filled with the resin. They had a similar machine that solidified a powered resin. Both were fascinating, though I thought the dry was more interesting to watch. It had a screed that smoothed the powder as the platen dropped a blonde one after each pass, while in the liquid one, the platen in the liquid resin just dropped. On the other hand, you could see the structure in the liquid resin (barely), while the structure in the power disappeared as soon as the screed passed over.
As I recall, the dry resin produced more intricate parts, but they required a lot of hand finishing. The liquid resin made nicer items, but couldn't do detail.

This rotating aspect is an interesting and relatively lo-tech application of several high-tech devices. One of those retrospectively genius things that happen when someone says "..what would happen if...".

Neil