The FUTURE of 3D Printing? Computed Axial Lithography!

Taylor takes us on a VERY deep dive of Computed Axial Lithography. How it began, how it works, and what's going on with it TODAY. WOW.

Computed Axial Lithography Github

Additional Reading:

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[barhamitzvah]

Hell yeah! Kudos to these folks for making things open source!

[BeardedPrinter]

Axial Lithography... so hot right now...

[reinux]

This dude's a really good presenter. He even has the textbook engineer nerd voice.

[nicellis]

This is basically a CT scanner in reverse. A CT (computed tomography) works by having an Xray camera rapidly spin around an object taking hundreds of Xrays that a computer then reconstructs into a 3D scan of the object.

This works in reverse, taking a 3D scan and splitting it into many still images that get projected like a video onto the object as it rotates. The high transparency of the resin means the light can pass through like an Xray and interact with the whole vial, but only cure when repeatedly exposed from multiple angles as the vial rotates.

[pithlyx]

WOW, the implementation of print time alon, for medical supplies is incredible. BUT THE ABILITY TO PRINTOVER OBJECTS?! Especially at that scale is INSANE, great work. Excited to see this get used for incredible things.

[ethansdadd]

Really neat! The overprinting probably provides a lot of interesting use cases.

[ChrisHarmon]

These guys definitely had fun hanging out.

[AgentPothead]

This is a great video and Taylor just seems like a great person. I can feel the enthusiasm from here and it is infectious. 👍

[Mngolicious]

Cool to see a video of that. I visited UC Berkley 5 years ago and talked with Hossein Heidari (left one in your picture) about that. We also made a "Thinker" in a glass vile which I still have. Cool technology.

[Chad.The.Flornadian]

SO much potential with this tech. Taylor is cool too...knowledgeable and lively and not afraid of the camera.

[DeAthWaGer]

Would an amber bottle help keep that solution safer in the light?

[amali]

Fantastic work, BUT, what I don't get is how comes the photons passing through the resin to form the structure don't actually polymerise the path they pass through?! In fact they probably do but the intensity of the light is designed to be high where the structure is and lower on the way to it. This raises the question of how reusable the remaining resin which probably would contain semi-polymerised resin, which is unlike SLA is mostly reusable.. worth clarifying...

[thenextlayer]

Oh snap, you're at my alma mater! Cool!

[josepmaringarces]

I would rotate the projector, that way your fluid might be more stable and perhaps achieve better printing result, just an idea :)

[TheNitroG]

They should try a second projector at a 180 degree angle and a mirrored video to speed up curing time. I would also think slower spin would give more accurate results and that may be worth reducing the lux of the projection, even though the fluid is stationary relative to the container that is spinning, relative to the world the inner fluid is stationary while the outer fluid is moving. so as the chains are formed and the fluid is displaced the viscosity of the fluid as a whole changes, I think those chains are going to get pushed sometimes and that's what is possibly causing the lined artifacts shown at 6:02.

I also wonder if it would be best to print a core or some sort of support structure, to print on top of as a first step.

[marcfruchtman]

This is really cool.
What prevents the beam of light from solidifying the outer surface of the resin first?

[ThomasAndersonbsf]

I am really glad photo catalytic processing has made it fully into the mainstream of 3D printing like this, we are not far from having everything except the ability to reclaim or print items directly from raw ores like I am currently working on, so by the time I am done I will be able to pull off the shelf developed processes to incorporate it into, Now if my 9-23 pin printer head design based multi fused filament print head were being worked on. need that code to allow going from 3D design to G-code to control it is all LOL Then we can have 3 hour prints happen in a minute or two instead of current 3 hour time lines.

[AFAR]

joel ma man, thank you for sharing 3d printing development with us. this is totally unique and awesome. you're awesome!

[astrodoug]

So awesome. Thanks so much for sharing your expertise and advances. Can't wait to see what else you'll have to share in the future.

[avinashthakur]

That's really interesting.
I have a doubt though. When we are rotating a container filled with liquid, the liquid may not rotate with same rate as the container. This effect will be lower for a liquid with high viscosity and less density, but it will always be present.

Does this pose an issue in this technique?

The solution could be simple, i.e. rotate it slowly or rotate the light source.