Can RepRap Revolutionize 3D Printing Again with the New Micron Design?

If you enjoy 3D printing as a hobby, you can thank the early contributors to the RepRap project for making that possible. Their efforts created the foundation on which the entire hobbyist and consumer 3D printing industry is built — a monumental achievement that is almost impossible to overstate. Vik Olliver was one of just a few people on the original core team and without him, 3D printing wouldn’t be what it is today. Now Olliver is back with a new design that could make waves again: the RepRap Micron.

I have tremendous respect for everyone who has contributed to the RepRap project and especially for those who were involved in the early years. But I don’t think it is controversial to say that RepRap has stagnated in the past decade — unless you count Voron or RatRig— as consumer 3D printing proved to be a profitable industry worthy of commercial interest. But Olliver’s new design, which he showcased at FAB25 Czechia (as reported by All3DP), is definitely worth discussing, because it is something entirely new.

Excepting a few RepRap-adjacent projects, RepRap designs have all been FFF (fused filament fabrication) designs. But the Micron is different and doesn’t extrude thermoplastic at all. Instead, it deposits very small droplets of UV-curable resin from the end of a needle-like wire with a point the size of a micron. The resulting objects have an effective “resolution” of 10-20 microns.

Working at that kind of scale (so small that the printer incorporates microscopes for viewing) with traditional motion systems would be almost impossible. Even if you gear down with a huge ratio, the slightest backlash (which is inevitable) would exceed the desired resolution. For that reason, Olliver made use of clever flexure-based kinematics borrowed from the OpenFlexure Microscope design that don’t have backlash concerns.

There are commercial 3D printers capable of even better precision than the RepRap Micron, but they’re wildly expensive and far outside the reach of hobbyists. Olliver’s Micron can be built for less than $300 and the files are already on GitHub.

The biggest “competition,” if you want to call it that, is MSLA resin 3D printing. There are consumer MSLA resin printers that approach the Micron’s effective resolution on paper, but the practicalities of the technology make printing parts on that scale unfeasible.

More importantly, this is just a very early (alpha release) prototype and it is sure to improve. Olliver is even optimistic about eventually achieving nanoscale printing using the tech, which would be genuinely astonishing. That would make nanoengineering accessible to small teams and even hobbyists.