This 3D printer can watch itself fabricate objects

These multimaterial 3D printing systems utilize thousands of nozzles to deposit tiny droplets of resin, which are smoothed with a scraper or roller and cured with UV light. Contact freeThis paper builds off a low-cost, multimaterial 3D printer known as MultiFab that the researchers introduced in 2015. Superior materialsThe researchers used the system to print with thiol-based materials, which are slower-curing than the traditional acrylic materials used in 3D printing. The researchers used thiol-based materials and wax to fabricate several complex devices that would otherwise be nearly impossible to make with existing 3D printing systems. This allows us to bring in whole new material families that couldn’t be used in 3D printing before,” Matusik says.