Transcriber: Emily Kirby Reviewer: Denise RQ
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.
(Applause)
Maybe a tank?!
So today I want to talk about the microprinter,
about my work, how everything started,
what was my motivation behind to build the smallest 3D printer in the world,
and let's start with my daily business.
So, my normal working field is called two photon polymerisation.
It sounds very nerdy, it is very nerdy,
and what do you need for making this stuff?
You need a complex laser system
a so called femtosecond laser system
which you focus to a very tiny spot, very, very, very tiny,
and this is a very expensive, not very durable laser system.
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,
a sample, at a 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,
and for comparison, the diameter of a human here
is about 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 polymerised,
and we catch up a living animal, here's the 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?
Everything started on Monday morning, 6:30 - ok that's a lie,
maybe it was 10 o'clock, when I went to my laserlab,
which is located near Karlsplatz, in Freihaus,
at the Vienna University of Technology,
and I went in and I saw that this laser system was broken.
And I tried to fix that, it took me half a day,
took me several hours, and then I noticed
that there is a major issue with the pump source.
I cannot fix that myself so we have to call the service technician.
And from that point on I noticed I have time to think.
I thought, what to do know, 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 3D microprinter in the world,
or the smallest 3D printer in the world.
(Laughter)
(Applause)
So I called my professor and told him about it.
" Hey! Let's build the thing! And I have time!"
And he said "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 stuff,
and after a few months, we had the first test run with the system,
it works brilliantly from the first test, 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 has been 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 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 is your model.
So maybe it's 100 slices, 1.000 ten thousand slices...
So, that's how it works.
Of course, thos is a much bigger machine than the micro printer
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.
OK, but [what] does the micro printer 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 3D micro printer which looks like this.
So it's very small, so it's really a desktop version,
it's really an affordable system.
And we are really proud of it, actually, 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,
(Laughter)
and they print it out...
Thank you.
(Applause)
Then they print it out with a big machine and then when it's ready
to send it back to Vienna, or wherever you are
via post, then they put in the electronic.
When you have a micro printer in your store,
so you can go to the store, they scan your ear,
they just press print,
the 3D model gets sliced, and you can go for a coffee,
you can go to the University, whatever you want
and instead of 5 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 3D printers, could change our everyday lives.
So thank you very much, and start printing
whatever you want, whatever you need.
(Applause)