Meet Manual, the 3D-Printed Book That Carries the Code Used to Print It

The text on the pages of this book, Manual, isn’t a traditional story. Look closely, and you’ll see it’s G-code, the machine language used to control 3D printers. Created by Studio Darius Ou with Benson Chong through their research initiative Hyperpress, the book contains a partial copy of the very G-code used to fabricate itself. In effect, it’s a 3D-printed book that contains the instructions for printing another 3D-printed book.

They say don’t judge a book by its cover, but what about its material? Manual is a 26-page book made of thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU), a flexible material that isn’t easy to print at “paper-thin” book scale. Getting it right took extensive testing to balance flexibility, durability, and print quality, and the designers ran into limits on how small the text could be printed while still holding up.

The mechanics behind the method

It’s printed using Hyperpress’s XY-for-Z method on a Bambu Lab printer. Rather than building up layer by layer from the bottom, the printhead works vertically and horizontally to print the pages on their edge rather than flat. That orientation is what makes double-sided pages and small, legible text possible. Moreover, it allows the whole book, pages, cover, and binding, to come off the print bed in one fully formed, continuous build. And for once in 3D printing, there isn’t even a post-processing step.