A 3D printer the size of a carton of milk

smallest 3d printer

It was just a few months ago that we wrote about how researchers at the Vienna University of Technology are using a process called “two-photo lithography” to 3D print structures smaller than a grain of sand. Now researchers at the same university have now created what TGDaily.com is calling the world’s smallest 3D printer.

With all the new 3D printers coming out seemingly every day, who can say if it’s really the world’s smallest, but to be certain, it’s very small — the size of a milk carton and it weighes just 1.5 kilograms.

It’s another in a wave of inexpensive Stereolithography-style 3D printers, with which the object is printed in a small tub of synthetic resin which hardens at each point that is illuminated with intense beams of light. Layer by layer, the resin is hardened until the object is completed. Its resolution is .05mm.

The 3D printer is not available to the public, but they say that it could be manufactured for only 1200 Euros, and considerably less if produced in large quantities. We’ll keep up with this and let you know if it ever leaves the lab.

  • http://www.cartridgesave.co.uk/ Cartridge James

    That’s tiny! I am sure the objects it creates are tiny as well.