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Nanoscale Race Car Gets 3D Printed With a Laser
An anonymous reader writes "Researchers at the Vienna University of Technology have managed to perfect 3D printing at the nanoscale. What may look like a grain of sand to the human eye could in fact be a detailed racing car model, a reproduction of a famous church, or London Bridge. The 3D printer relies on a laser beam directed by mirrors through a liquid resin onto a surface. It can print at 5 meters per second, which is a world record, and the end result is only a few hundred nanometers in size. The next hurdle: printing with bio-material so we can start making our own body parts/organs."
It's like they made a little car!
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
Hell, all the title needs is "Apple", "Raspberry PI", and "geohashing" and it's the perfect storm of a Slashdot article.
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
Well now we just need a nano track and a shrink ray to shrink you down Fantastic Voyage-style, and you can race in the Indy 500! (millimeters)
I was thinking I could use a tiny violin but it turns out you can get them off the shelf.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
You forgot Bitcoins.
That's ok, so did everyone else.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
I was hoping maybe the printer was also tiny. I live in a tiny apartment and a nano scale printer would be awesome. I'd love to have a 3d printer at home, but so far they all seem to be big counter hogs.
It's stretching it a bit to call it nano-scale. The legend on the images puts the models in the region of 100um. 0.1mm is not really nano-scale, unless the hair on our head is nano-scale. With around 200 lines per layer, we're still talking about hundreds of nanometers for the print resolution.
small is not nano, regardless of how much SEO you're after
It prints at micro scale. Willard Wigen is unimpressed.
TFA does superfluously mention the Raspberry Pi, if it's any help. (As an example of a reason to get a 3D printer, since it doesn't ship with a case. Total rubbish.)
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
Sorry to hear you're disappointed. Perhaps they can print a nano-violin and pretend to play it just for you :-)
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
.. if the printer prints a tiny nanoscale printer!
WHO IS LAUGHING NOW, FABRIC OF THE UNIVERSE?
I bet it's going to sound crappy too, it'll be a rip off, just like this 'vehicle', and it's not really nano either - too big for that.
You can't handle the truth.
Why make a tiny car when they could have actually printed the world's tiniest violin?
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
The next hurdle: printing with bio-material so we can start making our own body parts/organs.
Seriously? SERIOUSLY? ... Herp a derp, dude.
For what it's worth, at least one dude at which this should be directed is the one who wrote TFA; that's where that line originally comes from.
I was confused by this as well.
The printer isn’t slow, either. In just 4 minutes it can print 100 layers consisting of 200 lines per layer. That translates into five meters of polymer printed in one second, which is actually a world record.
So 20,000 lines in 240 seconds comes out to 83.3 lines/sec, making each line 60 mm wide? Either I'm misunderstanding (always a strong possibility) or there's a typo there somewhere.
my, your, his/her/its, our, your, their
I'm, you're, he's/she's/it's, we're, you're, they're
The ONLY reason I clicked on this link and went to see the story is that I thought it was a real race car printed on a 3d printer with a laser. I didn't even care to see the shark that the laser was attached to. /. tricked me at looking into TFA and I find it abhorrent, absolutely unacceptable behaviour on the part of /. - tricking people to click on TFA link.
Oh, it's not a real car, did I mention that?
Nano car. Crap.
Though you more likely meant:
This product is not yet being sold to raise money for ron paul, therefore it is evil and abhorrent. I must hate it even though it has done nothing bad to me. All hail lord ron paul.
Perhaps you accidentally swallowed a small nano model of something when you were trying to drink more kool-aid? That might explain why you forgot to pledge eternal unquestioning allegiance to your lord and savior in your post.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
I wonder if it will be possible to make the printed resin conductive? Or even better variably conductive.
reproduction of a famous church, or London Bridge.
It's TOWER BRIDGE. ffs. You can tell by the, um, towers.
How about we start referring to your landmarks as the Statue of Eiffel, or The Silver Gate Bridge, or the Quite Big Canyon?
-Jar
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Current 3D printers have a resolution limit on the order of 0.2 mm. If this can be improved by even one order of magnitude, you're getting to the point where objects look perfect to the naked eye.