New technology to make 2-D and 3-D printing ultra-fast

A major advanced technological foster in the field of high speed beam-scanning devices can increase the speed of 2D and 3D printing by up to 1,000 times, the researchers have been reported. By Using a space-charge-controlled KTN beam (an object that pushes aside the flow of something) a kind of crystal made of potassium tantalite and potassium niobate with a large electro-optic effect, the researchers found that the scanning at a much higher speed is possible. This research was published in the journal Scientific Reports, could benefit everyone, in that something being printed in 3D that once took an hour would now take seconds, and 20,000 pages printed in 2D would take one minute, said Shizhuo Yin, Professor at School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Pennsylvania State University, US. Basically, when the crystal materials are applied to an electric field, they create uniform reflecting distributions, that can push aside an incoming light beam, Yin said. We managed and did/done a well-thought-out study on indications of speed and found out the phase change (from one thing to another) of the electric field is one of the limiting factors," Yin noted. To overcome this issue, Yin and his team of (people who work to find information), eliminated the electric field-caused phase change (from one thing to another) in a nanodisordered KTN crystal by making it work at a higher temperature. They not only went beyond the Curie temperature (the temperature in which certain materials lose their magnetic properties, replaced by caused magnetism), they went beyond the critical end point in which a liquid and its vapour can live together.

This increased the scanning speed from the microsecond range to the nanosecond government in power and improved high-speed imaging, broadband optical communications, and ultra-fast laser display and printing, said the study. A technology like this would be especially meaningful in the medical industry -- high speed imaging would now be in (happening or viewable immediately, without any delay), Yin said. For example, optometrists who use a non-harmful imaging test that uses light waves to take (thin slice that can be looked at) pictures of a person's retina, would be able to have the 3D image of their patients' retinas as they are (doing/completing) the surgery, so they can see what needs to be corrected during the procedure, the (people who work to find information) explained.