This is the Tower Bridge, St Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna, and the tiniest F1 formula car you can imagine, all printed by the fastest 3D printer in the world. Watch it in action in this video.
Like other 3D printing processes, this one uses liquid resin, which gets hardened by tiny lasers. The process is called two-photon lithography and it can create insanely small objects at speeds that weren’t possible before.
The new printing process, which depends on the fine tuning of the acceleration of the laser mirrors, was created by a team of scientists at the Vienna University of Technology and can achieve the insane nanometer scale detail you can see in this image. Professor Jürgen Stampfl says that “until now, this technique used to be quite slow. The printing speed used to be measured in millimeters per second — our device can do five meters in one second.”
Whatever, crazy professor. I can’t wait for the day we can all print really complex mechanical objects at home. Until then, I just want to look at your video of lasers racing to create a race car. The machine, she is hot, no? [Viena University of Technology]