..when you’re having electron microscopes take the final photos of your 3D prints.
This car is a little under 300 microns long, or just about the right size to sit inside the more fine-pitch extruder nozzle tips you can get these days for your thermoplastic printers.
“Atoms are the new Bits” is still a while off, but if you could print at scale with these kinds of surface details, you could design surfaces of varying textures, from the details of the 3D file. A ridged surface would feel more “rubber-like” and a smooth one more “plastic-like”. Geometry details at this scale affect much subtler qualities of an object than it’s structural appearance, such as it’s texture, luster, and a couple notches lower, color.
Iridescence would be an excellent 3D printable feature of the future.
