AUSTIN (KXAN) — Inside a quiet lab at the University of Texas at Austin, a plastic hand slowly emerges from a shimmering vat of liquid resin. It looks like something straight out of “The Terminator.”
What UT researchers are building isn’t science fiction. It’s a new way to 3D‑print lifelike body parts — a discovery that could transform medical schools around the world.
A finger printed in 25 minutes
At UT’s ZAP Lab, Ph.D. candidate Elizabeth Recker lifts a metal build plate dripping with resin. Attached to it is a pair of 3D-printed hands giving the classic Hook ‘Em Horns sign.
“Everything is attached to what we call the build plate, and then from here what we can do is washing and post‑processing,” she said.
The hands were made using digital light processing 3D printing. A greyscale image is used as a blueprint. Liquid resin and light craft it into a solid object. Each layer, thin as a sheet of paper, is added on one at a time until the blueprint becomes reality.
While these hands are solid, next to them is a multi-material and anatomically correct finger. Taking just 25-minutes, the finger has bits that are softer, bits that are clear and a hard “bone” running through the middle.
A discovery born from an accident
The breakthrough behind this finger isn’t just the printer — it’s the light. Associate chemistry professor Zachariah Page, who runs the ZAP Lab, says the technology stems from a “serendipitous discovery,” called CRAFT, by colleagues at Sandia National Laboratories…