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Comment by schpaencoder | Hacker News Reader

In the mid 1980 there was a similar craze related to dot-matrix printers and their cps (chars per second, or how fast they were). Then laser printers became cheap and everyone forgot about the dot-matrix. I guess this is the same thing. Fast forward 15 years.

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Probably the next revolution in 3D printing speed will be something that prints an entire object at once, maybe via some sort of science fiction style hologram illuminating a resin. There are technologies that kinda resemble this on the cutting edge (like continuous liquid interface production), but we are still really far away from that ideal. For the foreseeable future we are probably doomed to incremental improvements.

It's probably possible to create a "matter hologram": we already know we can put molecules as large as C60 in quantum superposition. If we could create a coherent source of such molecules and pass them through a beamsplitter and suitable modulator (to shift their phase), combining the two beams, we could create an interference pattern in free space which would reify the object, like the replicator in star-trek.

The nicest thing about our mythical hologram printer is that supports would be unnecessary for stuff like overhangs and you could maybe even print complex internal structure, depending on just how capable your 3D hologram was. One can dream...

I think we should rename our mythical printer from "hologram" (which implies replay) to "quantum interference printer"

Are you serious, or was that just a quip?

total sci-fi

Pun intended? QuIP would be as nice name.

There are printers around that don't have any of these issues already - e.g. the resin based machines. So 3D printing is not in any way tied to extruding molten plastic.

However, they have problems of their own.

Fast forward is already here, if price is not an issue.

Because the brand Carbon has a 3D printer that is not only very fast but also creates production quality results.

Adidas for example is printing shoes with them.

But having a choise is always good. We still have inkjet printers. Laser printers didn't make them obsolete.

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