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Origins: 3D Printing

3D kidney

From Cup to Kidney

Working late one night in 1983, ChuckHull (EngrPhys’61) thought he’d made abreakthrough. The engineer phoned hiswife, Anntionette, at their California homeand asked her to drive to his lab to look ata small plastic cup.

“She said something to the effect of‘no way,’” he says, chuckling.

But a breakthrough it was: Thehumble cup was the first object evercreated via stereolithography — betterknown today as 3D printing. Hull hadfashioned a three-dimensional shape bylayering two-dimensional “slices” of aliquid, acrylic-based material hardenedby ultraviolet light.

The discovery would become thefoundation of a technology that’snow ubiquitous, from breadbox-sizedprinters used by hobbyists to refrigerator-sized printers used in healthcare,manufacturing and aerospace design.(Above: a 3D-printed model kidney.)

After graduating from CU, Hull took ajob with a DuPont subsidiary developinganalytical tools for chemists, thenmoved to a smaller firm that applied thinresin coatings to tabletop surfaces. Thecoatings cured instantly when exposedto ultraviolet light, which got him thinkingabout how the technology might beused to make 3D objects.

Hull convinced his boss to let him usea small lab on nights and weekends forexperimenting on his own time. Aftermore than a year of tinkering with liquidplastics, his labor paid off.

Hull secured a patent for stereolithographyin 1986 and soon founded acompany, 3D Systems. Initially, he sawthe technology primarily as a way ofprototyping objects, such as automotiveparts, more efficiently. Over time,the business expanded into custommedical devices and a wide range ofconsumer products.

Now 76 and a member of the NationalInventors Hall of Fame, Hull is still involvedin the day-to-day operations of 3DSystems, which opened a 70,000-square foothealthcare tech facility in Littleton,Colo., earlier this year. The companyrecently helped surgeons reconstruct the facial bones of a young man injured bya landmine in Zimbabwe — a reminderof how far technology can come in threedecades and the good it can do.