# The World’s Smallest 3D Printer

June 6, 2011

High-quality 3D printing at home has just come one step closer. Researchers at the Vienna University of Technology in Austria have presented the [smallest 3D printer to date](http://www.tuwien.ac.at/en/news/news_detail/article/7009/). At the size of a carton of milk and weighs 1.5 kilograms, it currently costs around €1,200 but the makers expect the price to drop quickly.

The printer uses [stereolithography](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereolithography): it hardens layers of synthetic resin by an intense beam of light of only .05mm wide. So not only is this printer small and cheap, but it also prints at a very high resolution!

You can see it in action here: