Engineers at EPFL’s Laboratory of Applied Photonic Devices (LAPD), within the School of Engineering, have developed a novel 3D printer capable of fabricating objects almost instantaneously in opaque resin, according to a press release by the institution published on Monday.
EPFL claims its new 3D printer is one of the fastest in the world. It achieves this speed by replacing additive manufacturing with a new volumetric method.
“We pour the resin into a container and spin it,” said in a statement Christophe Moser, a professor at LAPD. “Then we shine light on the container at different angles, causing the resin to solidify wherever the accumulated energy in the resin exceeds a given level. It’s a very precise method and can produce objects at the same resolution as existing 3D-printing techniques."
This new technique can be employed for objects of just about any shape. To prove this, the engineers produced a tiny Yoda in just 20 seconds. This is a task that would take ten minutes for a conventional additive-manufacturing process.
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