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Shark Hardware Technology

Nanoscale Race Car Gets 3D Printed With a Laser 39

An anonymous reader writes "Researchers at the Vienna University of Technology have managed to perfect 3D printing at the nanoscale. What may look like a grain of sand to the human eye could in fact be a detailed racing car model, a reproduction of a famous church, or London Bridge. The 3D printer relies on a laser beam directed by mirrors through a liquid resin onto a surface. It can print at 5 meters per second, which is a world record, and the end result is only a few hundred nanometers in size. The next hurdle: printing with bio-material so we can start making our own body parts/organs."
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Nanoscale Race Car Gets 3D Printed With a Laser

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  • by oodaloop ( 1229816 ) on Monday March 12, 2012 @03:44PM (#39330489)
    It's like they made a little car!
  • I was hoping maybe the printer was also tiny. I live in a tiny apartment and a nano scale printer would be awesome. I'd love to have a 3d printer at home, but so far they all seem to be big counter hogs.
  • by wjh31 ( 1372867 ) on Monday March 12, 2012 @03:57PM (#39330661) Homepage
    It's stretching it a bit to call it nano-scale. The legend on the images puts the models in the region of 100um. 0.1mm is not really nano-scale, unless the hair on our head is nano-scale. With around 200 lines per layer, we're still talking about hundreds of nanometers for the print resolution.

    small is not nano, regardless of how much SEO you're after
    • The only legitimate question remains, and it's this:

      Dude, where is my car?!

  • by schlameel ( 1017070 ) on Monday March 12, 2012 @03:59PM (#39330683)
    It prints at micro scale. Willard Wigen [willard-wigan.com] is unimpressed.
    • by wbic16 ( 632102 )
      Apparently the term "nano-scale" means that your manufacturing process has features measured in nm. Even if that is 400 nm or 1000 nm it seems. Example: https://nano-cemms.illinois.edu/materials/3d_printing_full [illinois.edu] Quote 1: " . . . incredibly thin polymer layers (on the order of 400 nm) . . . " Quote 2: "This activity demonstrates the basic challenges of nanoscale engineering and manufacturing."
  • by Anonymous Coward

    .. if the printer prints a tiny nanoscale printer!

    WHO IS LAUGHING NOW, FABRIC OF THE UNIVERSE?

  • Why a car? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Nidi62 ( 1525137 ) on Monday March 12, 2012 @04:26PM (#39331017)
    Why make a tiny car when they could have actually printed the world's tiniest violin?
  • I wonder if it will be possible to make the printed resin conductive? Or even better variably conductive.
  • reproduction of a famous church, or London Bridge.

    It's TOWER BRIDGE. ffs. You can tell by the, um, towers.

    How about we start referring to your landmarks as the Statue of Eiffel, or The Silver Gate Bridge, or the Quite Big Canyon?

    -Jar

  • Current 3D printers have a resolution limit on the order of 0.2 mm. If this can be improved by even one order of magnitude, you're getting to the point where objects look perfect to the naked eye.

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