RepRapMicron prints a 0.5mm Benchy at 4μm layer height
The μRepRap project aims to bring RepRap-style open fabrication down to the micron scale using only common, accessible materials. Its PIKA V0.02 build achieves roughly 1μm repeatable positioning and 10μm or better accuracy across an 8mm cube, depositing UV resin droplets as small as 4μm and curing 9μm lines with a fibre-optic probe. It builds on 3D-printed microscope platforms from The OpenFlexure Project.
If micron scale manufacturing can be achieved by RepRap-like technology, it is likely that these fields will be advanced in the same way that desktop fabrication was by the RepRap.
- mikewarot
I feel like we're reliving the late 1790s again, back then you had Ramsden figuring out how to divide the circle into into seconds of arc, taking the marking of scales from an artform into something that could be manufactured reliably. Maudslay with his thread cutting lathe took the making of screws from a manual process pawned off on apprentices to something that that could be done in mass production. Wilkinson's boring machine made it possible for Watt to build a pressurized steam engine.
All of these tools are based on things that were one-offs of earlier efforts, and turned into practical machine tools by someone that history chose to remember. We're now at the point where making things by manipulating individual atoms is something a determined amateur can do, it's amazing!
I find myself fascinated by the Wyler Inclinometer, which uses a thin copper disk with spiral arms as the basis of a differential capacitor, and when complete, resulting in a device that can used to calibrate a granite surface plate. It can typically measure 1 micron/meter of deviation.
We now have 3d printers that can reliably make almost anything you want by fusing filament, or stereolithography, or fusion of metal powders. You can buy desktop 5 axis CNC machines. There are control systems available to let you build almost any type of machine tool you can imagine, in as many axis as you want.
We've got software defined radio, cheap atomic clocks, transistors that can switch megawatts, all within re […]
- CarVac
Related: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvV2CH5il3Q
And the channel's preceding few videos covering the development of the prerequisite technologies.
- godber
Thank god, in 18 months we can start making our own RAM.
- samayashar
I see a lot of micro-chip designs that are so cool, but they just exist as a design in some software on our computers. If this printer can allow cheap and sustainable printing of chip designs, then the hardware field could take a very interesting turn!
- le-mark
I know it is a preposterous proposition to think this thing could create a 1/1000 version of itself, hence 1/1,000,000 3d printing, but why?