Terminator 2 inspired this new 3D printing technique

Terminator 2 probably isn’t the best movie to draw inspiration for your technology from but that’s exactly what a company by the name of Carbon3D did. The company has developed a new 3D printing technique known as Continuous Liquid Interface Production that enables it to 3D-print intricate objects at a ridiculous speed in a way that was inspired by the main antagonist from Terminator 2.

In an iconic scene in the movie “Terminator 2,” the robotic villain T-1000 rises fully formed from a puddle of metallic goo. The newest innovation in 3-D printing looks pretty similar, and that’s no mistake: Its creators were inspired by that very scene. The company Carbon3D came out of two years of stealth mode Monday night with a simultaneous TED Talk and Science paper publication. Their new tech, which they say could be used in industrial applications within the next year, makes coveted 3-D printers the likes of those sold by MakerBot look like child’s play. “We think that popular 3-D printing is actually misnamed — it’s really just 2-D printing over and over again,” said Joseph DeSimone, a professor of chemistry at University of North Carolina and North Carolina State as well as one of Carbon3D’s co-founders. “The strides in that area have mostly been driven by mechanical engineers figuring our how to make things layer by layer to precisely create an object. We’re two chemists and a physicist, so we came in with a different perspective.”