Printing Micron-Scale Benchies With Resin And Turmeric

A hacker known as Diffraction Limited built a micron-scale resin 3D printer using a fiber-coupled 405-nm laser and a custom micro-manipulator to hold the fiber tip near a resin-coated build plate, curing resin in a narrow cone similar to FDM printing. Early tests suffered from poor resolution because UV light penetrated cured resin too easily, but adding curcumin, the dye extracted from turmeric with alcohol, solved this by limiting light penetration depth and even left printed objects fluorescent under UV, easing microscope pickup. The setup produced 150-micron-long Benchies, a Stanford bunny smaller than a human hair, and other microscopic prints, all sliceable with standard FDM slicer software due to the toolpath similarity.

Source: https://hackaday.com/2026/09/06/printing-micron-scale-benchies-with-resin-and-turmeric. 8 Sync News only summarizes and links out; content copyright belongs to the authors and original sources.