High-speed microscale 3D printing | Hacker News Reader

High-speed microscale 3D printing

news.stanford.edu

73 pointsgmays20 comments

This almost sounds like what Carbon [1] is doing with their 'normal' resin printers. They project images through the bottom of a vat filled with resin. But a special membrane creates a small 'dead zone' where the resin does not cure. This makes continuous printing possible at an almost infinite z / height resolution. I believe they also use this for chemical properties because the small interface is full of oxygen.

[1] https://www.carbon3d.com/

There’s a good reason for this: Joe DeSimone founded Carbon3D as well. He’s at the forefront in this field.

From my own perspective, the interesting part of the carbon3D thing was that apparently the real money was in dental and orthodontics - an area a lot of venture and 3D printing probably does not delve into all that often.

Admittedly, there's apparently an industry I had never looked at that's actually kind of interesting, with metal and resin printed dentures. [1]

Such as, the first company on that list, which I never read about on Tom's or Ars or other 3D printing sites, Zortrax [2], apparently makes a semi-cheap printer that does bioresin (can you get that for home use? RepRap bioresin spools?) for $2k. $2k seems cheap compared to the carbon3D ones, they're apparently $50k-100k. Could reasonably print my own dentures for $2k.

[1] https://all3dp.com/1/dental-3d-printing-a-guide-for-professi...

[2] https://zortrax.com/applications/digital-dentistry/

"which I never read about on Tom's or Ars"

Aren't those consumer websites?

The 3D printing industry is over 50 years old. And I believe metal printing has the biggest market. But those printers are super expensive. Not something an avarage consumer is going to buy.

By the way: I don't think you can buy a Carbon printer. You need a service contract so you can lease them.

Yeah, consumer websites, although already pretty far out in "consumer". Out of 8B humans, not sure how many read Tom's.

I might buy a $2000 printer. That's at least in the range I might think about. People buy those $1000 engravers. There's a whole market just around selling the wood supplies, designs, and final products [1] from them. Especially when you can turn your $1000 purchase into a engraving hustle business.

[1] https://www.etsy.com/market/glowforge_wood?explicit=1&ref=gu...

Is there a chance that, like DNA origami, this technology might face challenges in finding real-world (or even basic science) applications? While it appears intriguing, is there potential for these structures to be effectively used in drug delivery or enabling reactions or processes that would otherwise be unfeasible? ASK HN: Can you list a few non-obvious uses for microscale 3D structures?

Maybe for some types of osmosis?

Creating tiny holes for osmosis is of course already possible but with 3D structures it might be possible to create things like ventury effects.

> For their part, the researchers have already experimented with producing both hard and soft particles, made of ceramics and of hydrogels. The first could see applications in microelectronics manufacturing and the latter in drug delivery in the body. “There’s a wide array of applications, and we’re just beginning to explore them,” said Maria Dulay, senior research scientist in the DeSimone lab and co-author of the paper.

Traduction of the last sentence: either mean "we don't know the applications it can have" or it's honest and there is many applications coming soon that can't be discussed publicly for some industrial reason.

Could you make a surface with an embedded array of tiny tesla valves with this technology?

Tiny tesla valves would be super interesting, potentially in the context of cell sorting, perhaps?

https://hackaday.com/2021/06/20/tiny-tesla-valves-etched-in-...

Seems like it would work beautifully.

What would be cool is to make a logic-gate-tesla-valve-micro-hydraulic computer?

The video on micro etching glass with HF is highly informative on this post...

he talks about etching tesla valves at the end...

https://i.imgur.com/dADV2q4.jpg <-- 30 microns long with channel width of 4 microns via etched glass...

https://i.imgur.com/pJsiuCg.png

https://youtu.be/gQnmP7UD_zk?t=806

So I wonder what resolution would be possible via the 3d version.

What would be really interesting to see with this method would be to make a blend of a spiral-screw with the tesla valves to climb or control vertical rates of flow.

---

Since this process can print in ceramics, I wonder if the can effectively make a "super-conductive-nano-wire with spiraling interconnected bucky-ball-shaped lattice of particles"

Yeah those ones are etched to be parallel to the surface. I was thinking of tiny circularly rotated (lathed?) ones oriented to the normal of the surface. So sticking straight through it.

Then you could have a surface that substances can permeate through, but only in one direction.

So kinda like a 3d printed Maxwell's demon. https://youtu.be/11QkX4u6RJg

Yeah, I was expressing the same thought... Cool that we see things and just go "huh, wouldnt it be cool if" and we can easily visualize something once we are given a small amount of Starter Dough for our Food For Thought.

I was really interested in this spiral Wirtz Pump

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCxRHueX6jQ

So if one were to combine a wirtz pump with a tesla valve, you might be able to eliminate the the air gaps in the tube. One thing would be cool too - is that you could easily use the tesla valves to merge fluids wihtout risking back-mixing ocurring at the confluence point - and you could direct fluids from any direction without fearing gravity fucking with your flow (tesla-valve-pipes may be really useful in weightless space?

I wonder if you could print flexible materials with this 3D printing method, and you could make a spiraling tesla-valve small tubing.

if you have micro versions, you could use the confuence points to mix proteins/amino-acids to stemcells in very precise amounts to determine which affect a certain expression from the stem cells.

(there was a researcher at UCSF who was doing this - sans tesla valves... and that was 10+ years ago...)

Interesting video. Thanks.

During the video the presenter mentions the loops need to be a similar diameter. If the loops were arranged in a drum formation rather than a disc you could have as many loops as you want.

Also, I wonder if this wirtz pump could be powered by tiny motors also created as part of the 3d print. This guy does something similar with a pcb: https://youtu.be/1taXx1L8YEs

Perhaps tiny magnets could be 3d printed as just iron beads that are then magnetised afterward?

"Tiny Magnets"

Imagine you have a cohesive, but ferro-fludic-plug (in the oil and gas industry, its called a PIG I think)

But you have a gelataneous, ferro-fluidic plug that is capable of flowing through the complex path of a Tesla Valve - you could direct the plug to flow through the trace magnetically. You could have "passing lanes where the ferro-fluid can exit the valve through another ferro-fluid "door" on the side of the trace - such that you can block, unblock tesla valves with a captured blob of a ferro-fluid that can be stored in the side reservoir.

and in a weightless environment, you can use the megnetic ferro-plug to pump fluid continuously this way was the ferrofluid could loop back to an earlier spot through the side channel that only it can enter...

If the channels are for micro fluidics, and you have electrical traces along the channels, they could be used to magnetically move things around/open close pathways...

and given the current materials that they can print, surely they can print the precise particles needed for the ferrofluid - especially if they are shaped like bucky balls that may be able to be directed to form perfectly packed "walls" where they particle geometry all nests and stacks in a more crystalline pattern?

I wonder if this method could allow for micro-fluid-hydraulics, where you can pump the micro hydraulic fluid via ferro-fluids, relying on the tesla valve to allow for forward pressure, and to release pressure, you open a back valve in the same manner.... with a tesla valve in the oposite direction, idealy have them in a helix where one helix is direction a and the other is direction b - and you can have ferrofluid gates at any cross member spine btwn the helix, just as dna... but made out of carbon nanotube bucky ball particles hahah

Interesting. So like electrically actuated micro valves right? Cool idea

exactly, seems like it will work at a range of scales.

I wonder why they didn’t try a pdms resin as well

here’s the paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07061-4.pdf

1 million per day of what looked like 1mm3 structures (with um features) mean a volume of 1dm3, which is 1L.

Do what you want with this information, I think it's not at industrial scale yet.

1L of penicillin at 1million units per mL can treat 1000 patients. And that’s per production process.

Size doesn’t matter.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com