3D printing technology has made significant progress in recent years. A team of scientists led by Professor Christophe Moser of the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne recently presented the Volumetric Helical Additive Manufacturing (VHAM) method.
This method makes it possible to print structures at multicentimeter scales without having to enlarge the projected patterns. By combining rotary and linear motions, larger objects up to 3 cm x 3 cm x 5 cm in size can be printed in minutes. These advances could open up new possibilities for high-resolution, high-speed object fabrication.
Light-based additive manufacturing typically uses a vat of liquid photopolymer resin that is cured layer by layer by UV light. However, this presents geometric constraints and throughput limitations. To overcome these, a new approach was proposed: the sample is moved on a spiral path around the light beam, allowing the size of the printable object to be doubled without compromising resolution.
Moser’s team used a DLP7000 chip from Texas Instruments to increase the size of the printed objects. Using a special spiral movement of the resin container, they were able to increase the number of building blocks inside by up to 12 times, enabling the production of larger objects.
This simple but effective approach opens up new possibilities for the high-resolution and fast production of objects with a size of up to 3 cm x 3 cm x 6 cm. Thus, this technology could be interesting for areas where custom-made objects in the centimeter range are needed, such as in the dental industry.
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