Nanoscale 3D Printer Now Commercially Available

kkleiner writes "Now the field of 3D printing has advanced so far that a company called Nanoscribe is offering one of the first commercially available 3D printers for the nanoscale. Nanoscribe's machine can produce tiny 3D printed objects that are only the width of a single human hair. Amazingly this includes 3D printed objects such as spaceships, micro needles, or even the empire state building."

Comments

Amazing technology but micro, not nano.

[John Hasler]

n/t

Re:Amazing technology but micro, not nano.

[hairyfish]

"Nano" actually now means "small" to the press. I'm sorry it isn't technically correct, but you are going to have to get used to it.

No we're not. I can accept this interpretation in the local rag, but Slashdot's target audience is smart people (apparently). We should be sticking to technically accurate terminology at all times.

Re:Okay, that's great. Now scale it.

[Opportunist]

You're barking up the wrong tree. Getting to this precision isn't the problem with "normal scale" prototyping. That could be accomplished long before the advent of 3D printing, and high precision prototypes are not really the area where 3D printers are used. At least not the consumer grade models that most people know about.

3D printing was and is about is to make the whole deal cheap. To give everyone access to the ability to produce plastic prototypes that doesn't involve a process that resembles playing with very expensive Play-Doh.

This thing is a completely different beast altogether. From the looks of it alone you can easily tell that "cheap" wasn't really one of the corner stones this project rested on. Building really tiny things was.