A 3D Printer that Can Watch Itself 3D Print

Researchers from MIT have developed a new 3D inkjet printing system that works with a much wider range of materials. The printer utilizes computer vision to automatically scan the 3D printing surface and adjust the amount of resin each nozzle deposits in real-time to ensure no areas have too much or too little material.

“Our key insight here was to develop a machine-vision system and completely active feedback loop. This is almost like endowing a printer with a set of eyes and a brain, where the eyes observe what is being printed, and then the brain of the machine directs it as to what should be printed next,” says co-corresponding author Wojciech Matusik , a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT who leads the Computational Design and Fabrication Group within the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL).