The world's smallest 3D printer

What could you do with the world's smallest 3D printer? Klaus Stadlmann demos his tiny, affordable printer that could someday make customized hearing aids -- or sculptures smaller than a human hair.

Hello everybody,
thanks for having me today.

I'm a little bit injured,

but it takes more than a car
to stop me from talking to you.

(Laughter)

(Applause)

Maybe a tank?

So today, I want to talk
about the microprinter,

about my work, how everything started,

what was my motivation to build
the smallest 3-D printer in the world.

Let's start with my daily business.

So, my normal working field is called
two-photon polymerization.

It sounds very nerdy, it is very nerdy.

(Laughter)

What do you need for making this stuff?

You need a complex laser system,

a so-called femtosecond laser system,

which you focus onto a very tiny spot --
very, very, very tiny --

and this is a very expensive,
not very durable laser system. (Laughs)

And on the other hand, you need
a very complex positioning system.

We call it "Agathe,"
because it's very heavy,

and we thought Agathe was a nice name.

(Laughter)

And, well, you need this system
to move the laser through,

for example, at the very accurate
level, about 200 nanometers,

so very accurate.

And, well, what can you do with that?

You can do things
that you cannot see with your eyes.

So you can print out whatever you want,

you can print out a tower bridge,
you can print out Agathe's husband ...

(Laughter)

OK, but, what makes it so mind-blowing?

You maybe notice this scale bar,
and it's 100 microns for the tower bridge

and 20 microns for the fat man.

For comparison, the diameter
of a human hair is around 50 microns.

So these objects are like
a dust particle or even smaller,

so you can hardly see them.

What you can also do
and what we are also working on

is improving the system,
improving the resins,

the material we use for catching
a worm or something else.

Inside the resin, we move the laser
through the resin, it gets polymerized,

and we catch a living animal,

here, a special worm.

What we're trying to do,
or what the next step would be,

is to make biocompatible polymers
and maybe to write some things

inside your body
or inside the body of a worm,

or to attach cells
to our structures, and so on.

But, OK, that's my normal working field.

Today I want to tell the story
behind the microprinter.

What was my motivation?

Well, everything started
on Monday morning, 6:30.

OK, that's a lie. Maybe it was 10 o'clock.

(Laughter)

I went to my laser lab, which is located
near Karlsplatz, in Freihaus,

at the Vienna University of Technology.

I went in, and I saw
that this laser system was broken,

and I tried to fix it.

It took me half a day, several hours.

Then I noticed, OK, there is a major
issue with the pump source.

I cannot fix that myself; we have to call
the service technician.

And from that point on,
I noticed I had time to think.

So I thought, "What to do now?
Maybe start to write my PhD thesis."

(Laughter)

No, no, not a good idea at all.

So I started thinking, maybe
write a scientific paper.

Not a good idea at all.

And then, on Saturday,
after a week of thinking,

I came up with the idea

to build the smallest
3-D microprinter in the world.

(Laughter)

Or, the smallest 3-D printer in the world.

(Applause)

So I called my professor
and told him about it.

"Hey, let's build the thing!
I have time. Is it OK?"

"Go ahead, build it."

And so I went to the university,
and from that point on,

I just put everything out of my brain
inside the computer

to make this CAD construction
of the whole thing.

And after a few months,
we had the first test run with the system.

It worked brilliantly
from the first test on,

and it had the same resolution
as systems which cost 60,000 euros,

and we only spent 1,500 euros
for the system,

not including my salary,

but that wouldn't add so much on its own.

(Laughter)

OK, how does this work?

I brought you a video

where you can see how you can put
in your three-dimensional file.

This video was produced
by a friend of mine, Junior Veloso.

And you can see, you have
a set stage which moves up.

And under the set stage,
there is a liquid,

which gets solidified by the light.

And slice by slice, you create the model,

so you really pull it out of the liquid.

And it just depends
on how big your model is.

Maybe you have 100 slices,
1,000 or 10,000 slices.

So that's how it works.

Of course, this is a much bigger machine
than the microprinter,

but it uses more or less
the same principles,

so that's what I want to show you.

At the end, this head, this alien head,

is attached to the building platform,

and when the process is done,
you just simply have to break the head

from the support structure you need,

and then everything is ready.

So.

OK, but what does
the microprinter look like?

Well, maybe some of you
have already seen this picture.

I also brought it to you in person,
so I want to kindly introduce you

to the 3-D microprinter,
which looks like this.

So it's very small,
it's really a desktop version.

It's a really affordable system.

And we are really proud of it,
actually, and --

(Laughter)

And you have this tiny little system;
there are bigger ones.

What can you do
with a cheap, affordable system?

For example, you all know
these hearing aids?

They have to be produced
individually for each person,

so this is a perfect example

for using this technology
to create the shell for a hearing aid.

Normally, you go to the store,
they scan your ear,

they send the data
to Germany via email, and --

(Laughter)

and then they print it out with a --

(Applause)

Thank you.

(Applause)

Then they print it out with a big machine,

and then, when it's ready
to send back to Vienna

or wherever you are --

via post --

then they put in the electronics.

When you have a microprinter
in your store,

you can go to the store,

they scan your ear,

they just press "Print,"

the 3-D model gets sliced,

and you can go for a coffee,

you can go to the university,
whatever you want,

and instead of five days, you can have
your ear shell or your hearing aid

in just one day.

And that is an example
of how these tiny little machines

or other cheap 3-D printers
could change our everyday lives.

So thank you very much,

and start printing whatever
you want, whatever you need.

(Applause)