The new technique does have a few familiar features. The use of light to solidify polymers isn’t new. Dentists have been using it for years. The very high efficiency creation of a 3D solid in liquid, however, is new, and it’s beautiful science and design.
Developed at the University of North Carolina, this technique is called CLIP, for Continuous Liquid Interface Production. It creates a structure in the liquid using beam technology. The liquid is a homogenous polymer. The structure is extracted, and simply hardens and dries.
In the demo video, the structure printed looks like it should be a component of something. It’s actually a symmetrical object, common among current 3D printing morphologies, but this one has a quite demanding structure. Things can be printed at a size 20 microns, true nano scale, using this tech, and that’s big business.
High efficiency 3D printing has really only been a matter of time. Everybody in industry has accepted that it’s the most flexible, and certainly the most cost-efficient, option for creating practically anything, especially at short notice.
The big deal about this method is that it offers exceptional efficiency, combined with the degree of flexibility required to produce very complex products. UNC points out with justifiable pride that it can be tailored to meet the demands of new patents, for example, another big plus in the very demanding world of “get it right” prototyping and product development.
The academic paper provides a quick overview of the technique, which translated into English says that the product is protected from light while being created in the media by inhibiting photopolymerization, then extracted to use the light and oxygen as its solidifying agents.
The demo is a relatively simple object, but you’ll notice it has a nicely organized internal structure. That’s the other breakthrough.
Early 3D printing was more or less loom-like, excruciatingly slow, and quite ponderous in terms of productivity/time ratios. This is the approach which will really let 3D printing off the leash in real time. That factor alone will save (and make) printers and clients billions.
Custom/advanced 3D is now gigantic business and big science as well as a real commercial asset, and it’s much appreciated by designers, inventors, and engineers as an invaluable time saver. This tech improves the time factor, and from the look of it, can generate massive productivity gains for 3D printing businesses.
The next issue is scale. There’s no reason to suppose this demo can’t be upscaled to 3D print a plane, for example, but there’s a bit of a logistics tail to systems like that, and a cost factor. More than likely, the workaround is to create a 3D printer to print the 3D printers. The logic of good science is to argue its way to better logic. The logic of success, and the logic of business are to argue their ways to better margins. A 3D printed house is about 5 years away, from the look of this.
It’s also only a matter of time until other materials can be printed this way. Current conventional 3D printers can print using a reasonably large range of materials, and things like metals have equivalent structures, crystalline structures, which in a similar “syrup” could be strengthened using heat, cold, UV, and maybe just plain old do-nothing, let it dry out tech in theory.
This is the new Industrial Revolution, in Pre-Cambrian form. It won’t stop there.
