Tsinghua University Achieves Sub-Second Volumetric 3D Printing with High-Speed Periscope

A New Approach to Volumetric Printing

One of the more promising 3D printing technologies that hasn't quite yet had its spotlight is volumetric printing. Researchers from the Department of Automation at Tsinghua University have developed a new method that uses a high-speed periscope instead of rotating the printing volume—resulting in print times of less than one second.

The Problem with Speed

Normal volumetric printing uses a rotating volume of photosensitive resin to print nearly any geometry desired. However, this method presents issues when printing at high speeds. If you rapidly rotate a liquid, it won't exactly stay still—creating distortions and defects.

The Tsinghua team asked a simple question: why not rotate the projector instead of the resin?

High-Speed Periscope Solution

By rotating the projector through a high-speed periscope mechanism, the researchers eliminated the need to spin the resin vat at extreme speeds. This change also allows the use of less viscous resins, which is particularly useful if you want to pump fluid around.

Mass Production Potential

Why would you want to pump around liquid? Scalability, of course. Printing in seconds while pumping the results into a collection vessel would allow for mass production more flexible than traditional injection molding methods.

The researchers managed to keep quality high with some fancy algorithmic correction, which allows for accuracy on the scale of micrometers.

The Road Ahead

While this technology still doesn't find a common space among average hobbyists, this may soon change—especially with these mass manufacturing capabilities. The breakthrough brings volumetric printing closer to practical industrial applications.

For similar volumetric printing capabilities, check out xolography—a method to improve the accuracy of volumetric 3D printing that emerged in 2021.

What This Means for 3D Printing

Volumetric printing represents a fundamental shift in how we think about additive manufacturing. Rather than building objects layer by layer, volumetric techniques create entire objects simultaneously through controlled light patterns in a photosensitive resin.

The Tsinghua breakthrough demonstrates that the technology is advancing rapidly, potentially opening new possibilities for high-volume production of complex geometric shapes that would be difficult or impossible to achieve with traditional layer-by-layer printing.