Slow 3D printing? With this technology it will be 30 times faster

3D printing is a tool with great potential, but printing times still remain quite long, a factor that increases in proportion to the complexity of the object to be printed. However, things could soon change, thanks to the work carried out by a team of scientists from the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland. The research group has in fact demonstrated a new 3D printing technology, capable of drastically reducing the time of the printing process.

In the demonstration, the new printing technique, which uses a photopolymerizable resin solidified through precise intersecting beams of light, was able to produce a figurine at a speed 30 times faster than current additive 3D printing techniques. This new technique was devised already 5 years ago by the Swiss Polytechnic and has been perfected over several years, so much so that, according to the research team, this would currently be the fastest 3D printing method in the world.



Volumetric 3D printing
According to the researchers, the new method is very precise and would allow objects to be printed with a detail equal to that of existing 3D printing methods. The new technique made it possible to complete the statuette of the master Yoda you see above in just 20 seconds. A much shorter time than the 10 minutes it takes to print the same file with an additive 3D printer. In the printing process, opaque resin was also used, a type that with current 3D printers does not ensure a good level of detail, but which, with the volumetric technique developed by Swiss scientists, was able to maintain a degree equal to that. of white resin.

The researchers' next goal is to be able to print more than one object at a time with this new technique, and to further increase the level of detail in the print.