Nanoscale 3D Printer Now Commercially Available 127
kkleiner writes "Now the field of 3D printing has advanced so far that a company called Nanoscribe is offering one of the first commercially available 3D printers for the nanoscale. Nanoscribe's machine can produce tiny 3D printed objects that are only the width of a single human hair. Amazingly this includes 3D printed objects such as spaceships, micro needles, or even the empire state building."
Amazing technology but micro, not nano. (Score:5, Insightful)
n/t
Re:Amazing technology but micro, not nano. (Score:3, Insightful)
so 30nm resolution is not nano scale enough for you?
Re:Amazing technology but micro, not nano. (Score:5, Insightful)
"Nano" actually now means "small" to the press. I'm sorry it isn't technically correct, but you are going to have to get used to it.
No we're not. I can accept this interpretation in the local rag, but Slashdot's target audience is smart people (apparently). We should be sticking to technically accurate terminology at all times.
Re:Not molecular printing unfortunately (Score:4, Insightful)
Price may, value depends on usefulness.
Not everything that has a high value has a price tag attached to it. No matter what our market tries to blind you with.
Re:Okay, that's great. Now scale it. (Score:5, Insightful)
You're barking up the wrong tree. Getting to this precision isn't the problem with "normal scale" prototyping. That could be accomplished long before the advent of 3D printing, and high precision prototypes are not really the area where 3D printers are used. At least not the consumer grade models that most people know about.
3D printing was and is about is to make the whole deal cheap. To give everyone access to the ability to produce plastic prototypes that doesn't involve a process that resembles playing with very expensive Play-Doh.
This thing is a completely different beast altogether. From the looks of it alone you can easily tell that "cheap" wasn't really one of the corner stones this project rested on. Building really tiny things was.
Re:Amazing (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm childish enough to find many things amazing.
Sometimes in the wee hours when the mind roams I still get a hint of the simple rush from my first experience with an interactive computer, one of the early 8-bit machines: I press a key, and a letter shows up on the screen. Very simple it is; yet all the tech, all the science underlying it, the full range of variously insightful to plodding accomplishments needed to design and build the circuits and instructions still fascinates. I try to appreciate and accord value to well-designed, well-made items that are shepherded through the constraints of materials, cost to build, and market vagaries, amongst others - be it a nail clippers or a CPU.
My knowledge being small, my understanding smaller, my ignorance vast as Universe, there's plenty for amazement.
Am I amazed enough for you, or will you slough me off as simply dotty?