Revolution in the world of 3D printing: goodbye to the classic overlapping layers. Now for more precision and higher speed objects are sculpted with the light of pairs of laser beams. Published in the journal Nature, the method was developed by the Harvard University group led by Dan Congreve.
Hi-tech food
3D printed meat is coming, are we really ready?
by Andrea Nepori
It is a hi-tech evolution of the most widely used 3D printing method in the industrial field, that of the so-called Selective Laser Synthesizers (SLS), tools that use laser pulses to very precisely melt the powders found in a container. : only the parts hit by the laser melt together to give life to an object that thus seems to emerge from the dust. It is a very different solution from that used in more popular 3D printers which superimpose thin layers of heated resin. Rather than building layer by layer, SLS machines seem to sculpt objects with light.
All free
There is a digital museum that allows you to 3D print works of art
by Marco Cimminella
By controlling the laser very accurately, it is thus possible to sculpt the gel by simply using beams of light. And now these new printers are preparing to work operationally to create objects and materials that were previously impossible. By being able to control the solidification of tiny polymers, it is in fact possible to build custom-made materials, useful for example to improve the efficiency of solar cells or to build very small sensors, or to obtain tiny machines with the size of a few nanometers.