EPFL students have made a high-performance 3D printer that can print structures measuring just a few microns across.
Six months ago, EPFL professors Christophe Moser and Jürgen Brugger were in the market for a printer. But all the options were either too expensive or not up to standard. So they decided to build their own: an ultra-thin filament printer capable of printing in two and three dimensions. “We had some funding from EPFL, but we couldn’t find a melt electrowriting (MEW) printer that met our requirements,” says Moser. The pair decided to put the School’s students and engineers on the case. “We started from square one,” explains the prototype’s designer Deeke Ehmen, an engineer at the Microsystems Laboratory 1, part of EPFL’s School of Engineering (STI). “We had to learn how MEW technology works and what materials we needed to use.”
Source: “A 3D printer made entirely at EPFL”, EPFL News
