3D Printing On a Microscopic Scale 34
cylonlover writes "Three-dimensional printers are popping up everywhere these days. Some are small enough to fit in a briefcase and others are large enough to print houses, but scientists at the Vienna University of Technology are going for the microscopic. Earlier this year, the university built a 3D printer that uses lasers to operate on a tiny scale. Now they're refining the technique to enable precise placement of a selected molecule in a three-dimensional material. This process, called '3D-photografting,' can potentially be used to create a 'lab on a chip' or artificially grow living tissue."
Re:StarTrek Replicator (Score:5, Interesting)
Am I the only one that sees it?
no. it's basic scifi material. universal constructor building would be a holy grail for manufacturing - for manufacturing _anything_. meanwhile, I just got my makerbot replicator last week. been having fun ever since.
it's still pretty rough around the edges, the sw(replicatorg) has some odd quirks(who am I kidding.. they're bugs.), configuring the slicer(the program that creates the paths for the print-end) is voodoo and I'm considering buying hairspray to better bond the prints to the build platform when building.
but it's fun and magical stuff - certainly first time in years that I've felt getting a piece of "new technology" that's just not refinement of something I've already had for years. it's like getting that first computer.
(oh and anyone uploading stuff to thingiverse.. print it before uploading.. lot's of the stuff there is no good for printing without changes!).
also, does anyone know a site that has the elite shipmodels? vrml mesh, stl(preferred), .obj, .3ds or any fucking format under the sun! I WANT THEM NOW!
Re:Antisocial Usage (Score:4, Interesting)
It will almost certainly be more economical to make something like a nerve agent using old fashioned chemistry. You can scale up a synthesis to bulk volumes much more easily than waiting for a printer to print out a bulk amount of product. Reaction rate (or reaction time) is independent of volume (ideally), whereas printing time will go linearly with volume.
Re:3d printing could be the end of capitalism (Score:2, Interesting)
yeah, that's what people used to say about music production technology in the 90s "oh it'll be a long time until you can replace a whole studio with a laptop!" which was true if by long time you mean 10 years. sure, there are still a few studios around for recording drums or with specially treated vocal booths etc. but for a huge amount of music having to pay a high hourly rate to rent studio time and hire a recording engineer is a thing of the past.