A Life-Size Human Ear, Printed in a Vial of Gel in Two Minutes

Ben Sullivan
The ear appears all at once. A glass vial of clear gel, a stage rotating beneath a 150-milliwatt blue laser diode, a hologram flickering through 1,440 frames per second, and after 2 minutes and 12 seconds, suspended in the middle of the cylinder, a life-size human ear. No layers. No support scaffolding. Just a complete, three-dimensional object that has materialized inside the gel like a photograph developing in reverse, only sculptural. That, roughly, is what tomographic volumetric additive...