Small print: 3D-printing of microparts

Assorted coils and helices produced with Exxadon’s CERES metal µAM system. Images: Exxadon

Thirty-some years ago, I attempted to machine a staple intended for vascular surgery. It was supposed to have the diameter of a human hair. The buyer, who worked at a well-known medical company, couldn’t source such staples elsewhere and asked me to machine some.

I failed miserably. Despite my weekend-long efforts, I was unable to get the cutting tool sharp enough and the spindle speed high enough to turn anything more than a crude approximation of the desired product.

The exercise gave me an appreciation for microsized parts, however, which is why I take a certain glee in the following statement: It’s now possible to 3D-print parts just 1 µm in diameter (0.00004")—100 times smaller than the target of my long-ago lesson in machining humility.

I once wrote for a magazine that focused on micromanufacturing. It was there I learned to use words like “miniscule,” “teeny,” “diminutive,” and, my favorite, “Lilliputian.” It now looks like I’ll get to use them again, because additive is going places that were once unthinkable.

Imagine additively manufacturing an anatomically accurate version of Michelangelo’s David on the end of my erstwhile staple, or a series of highly detailed Leaning Towers of Pisa. Microscale metal 3D printer manufacturer Exaddon has produced those objects, which are little more than show-and-tell examples of its capabilities. But the Swiss company’s work in neuroprosthetics, MEMS devices, and other mircro-AM componentry is serious business.

Add to this the development of 3D-printable carbon-nanotubes, graphene, quantum dots, and other nanoparticles and it raises endless possibilities for microminiaturization.

In hindsight, 3D printing has been breaking the rules of conventional manufacturing for more than three decades; we should have expected that it would one day delve into the ridiculously petite.

There are certainly other developments in this important (albeit, tiny) space. Truth be told, though, I didn’t go looking any further than the two just mentioned. My goal here is not promotion, but the sharing of my wonderment at all that 3D printing can accomplish.

So stay tuned. AM is taking us places few of us can foresee, many of which will be exceedingly small.

Exxadon 3D-printed this 360-µm-tall, copper replica of the Leaning Tower of Pisa.