Holographic 3D printing demonstrated - near instant results

[awerby]

I always wondered if this would work, but researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Labs have demonstrated that it can. They illuminated a tank full of photo-catalyzed resin with 3 matching holograms reflecting high-powered laser light into the same space. The result was an object produced more or less immediately as a whole part - no layers, no support necessary. Read about it here: https://singularityhub.com/2017/12/0...0vf11hmfc6dco9

[curious aardvark]

That is very clever.
I've never understood how holograms work :-)

The thing at the end of the article seems weird. They talk about sinning the tank and taking minutes rather than seconds - surely that's a tep backwards ?

[awerby]

I've made holograms; they were always going to be the next big thing... Now people use the term for any 3D illusion, so nobody understands what they're really about. I didn't understand why they drained the tank either, rather than just fishing the part out. But maybe the "laser speckle" effect they mentioned creates floaters, so they need to strain them out each time.

[Trakyan]

The parts seem pretty small (and delicate?), that could be why they opt to drain the tank rather than fishing them out.

I think the spinning the tank idea is because aligning and powering three lasers is very expensive, it's probably an idea to cut costs. It basically turns into an SLA printer that builds layers out radially rather than vertically.

[Davo]

Very interesting.