Continuous Liquid Interface 3D Printer

This new 3D printing technology looks like science fiction. But it's entirely real — the scientists who created it were inspired by the futuristic liquid metal in the movie Terminator 2.

Joseph DeSimone and the other University of North Carolina scientists who describe it in a new paper published today in Science call it "continuous liquid interface production." (They've also founded a new company called Carbon3D to sell the printer.)

Unlike conventional 3D printing, their printer continuously forms a new object, rather than printing it in layers. As a result, they say, it's much faster than conventional 3D printing (it takes minutes, instead of hours).

This could finally bring the big advantage of 3D printing — that it lets you easily customize or tweak designs by making changes to software, rather than building new manufacturing machines — to mass consumer products.

Source: vox.comAdded: 17 March 2015