While additive manufacturing (AM), commonly known as 3D printing, is enabling engineers and scientists to build parts in configurations and designs never before possible, the impact of the technology has been limited by layer-based printing methods, which can take up to hours or days to build three-dimensional parts, depending on their complexity.
However, by using laser-generated, hologram-like 3D images flashed into photosensitive resin, researchers have discovered they can build complex 3D parts in a fraction of the time of traditional layer-by-layer printing.