“Don’t be fooled by the name” begins an article about 3D printing posted to The Harvard Gazette website. Although 3D printers produce 3D objects, continues the piece—titled “Making 3D Printing Truly 3D”—they do so by stacking “regular old 2D” layers of material one atop the other.
Researchers at Harvard are developing a volumetric 3D printing process that eliminates the conventional bottom-up, layered approach.
Current and former researchers at Harvard’s Rowland Institute are working to change that. They’re developing a volumetric 3D printing process that eliminates the conventional bottom-up, layered approach. Their goal is to print entire volumes of material at one time instead of the slower layer-by-layer approach. (Click here to read an Additive Report article on the subject.)
Key to the method is the use of nanocapsules in the resin that react to blue light. Daniel N. Congreve, an assistant professor at Stanford and former fellow at the institute, explained: “We designed the system so that the red light does nothing. But [a] little dot of blue light triggers a chemical reaction that makes the resin harden and turn into plastic. Basically, what that means is you have this laser passing all the way through the system and only at that little blue do you get the polymerization. We just scan that blue dot around in three dimensions and anywhere that blue dot hits it polymerizes and you get your 3D printing.”
The researchers wrote a paper titled “Triplet fusion upconversion nanocapsules for volumetric 3D printing” that can be purchased from the journal Nature.
