A New Resin 3D Printer Combines a CT Scanner and Light to Increase its Speed

At the Technical University of Denmark (DTU), a team of researchers have developed a new kind of 3D printer whose technology combines a CT scanner and light. By reversing the principle of CT scanning, they could create all types of parts in record time from different polymer resins and play on their hardness. They would thus be able to reproduce the appearance of blood vessels or muscle tissue.

Today’s CT scans allow us to make slice images of our body parts and to visualize tissues of different densities. This X-ray machine is therefore used in the medical sector to establish a diagnosis. In this case, it was used to design a new, faster resin 3D printer.

Assistant Professor Yi Yang is behind this project (photo credits: DTU)

Yi Yang is an assistant professor in DTU Chemistry and was involved in this project. He explained, “Our printer will build a physical object at the intersects of computed tomographic images. The technology enables us to build 3D objects embedded with different properties and material transitions. We use a method called Tomographic Vat Photopolymerization (TVP), which allows us to print all points in a 3D object simultaneously. One has to imagine a box containing a liquid polymer – a kind of polymeric printer ink. By exposing the ink to light of certain wavelengths, determined by a 3D image and built up as a CT scan, the ink turns solid in the desired shape.”