Nick Diaco

I just published my first paper at MIT! We developed a new 3D printing process that enables dissolvable, recyclable support structures. 🧵

Hearing aids, mouth guards, dental implants, and other custom-fit devices are often made using 3D printing. MIT engineers have developed a method that speeds up the process and dramatically reduces waste, making personalized manufacturing faster and cleaner. news.mit.edu/2025/new-3d-pr…

@HristakievD This is awesome

Dentists: brush twice a day. Us: print 728 times a day.

A Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) graduate student, the 27-year-old has focused his research on resin 3D printing, which is commonly used in the medical and jewelry industries. stpetecatalyst.com/tampa-native-c…

@Scout_AB @MIT FDM printers like Bambu's can already use dissolvable supports, but resin 3D printing can't. Our new research brings dissolvable, recyclable support structures to resin 3D printing, which is faster, higher-resolution, and much more industrially relevant than FDM.

@MIT Great concept, and huge fan of @MIT but how’s this differ from Bambulabs print in place gears using either no support, the same material or support material as support, then recycling the material using an extruder? Dissolvable support for traditional 3d printing would be ideal

MIT just invented a next-level 3D printing method that can build super complex designs, ike futuristic gadgets and wild architecture. It’s faster, smarter, and could totally change how we build things. news.mit.edu/2025/new-3d-pr…

MIT engineers developed a technique for making intricate structures with supports that can be dissolved and reused instead of thrown away. The team exposed the new resin simultaneously to patterns of UV light to form a sturdy structure, as well as patterns of visible light to form the structure’s supports. Instead of having to carefully break away the supports, they simply dipped the printed material into solution that dissolved the supports away, revealing the sturdy, UV-printed part. Check out the full article here: wevolver.com/article/new-3d… Image/video credits: @MIT #3dprinting #additivemanufacturing #technology #engineering #innovation

Check out our full paper in Advanced Materials Technologies:
doi.org/10.1002/admt.2… And MIT News coverage here:
news.mit.edu/2025/new-3d-pr…

The co-authors who made this work possible include Carl Thrasher, Max Hughes, Kevin Zhou, Michael Durso, Saechow Yap, Professor Robert Macfarlane, and Professor A. John Hart, head of MIT’s Department of Mechanical Engineering.

Here are a few demo prints we made using this new process: functional gear assemblies, intricate lattices, volumetrically packed arrays of parts, and a denture base — no manual support removal needed!

Recycling in action: Print a dinosaur in an egg, dissolve the egg in monomer, then reuse the dissolved support solution to create more resin and print more dinosaurs — reducing waste and enabling sustainable resin use.

Using just one resin and two wavelengths of light, visible light forms a dissolvable thermoplastic while UV creates a sturdy thermoset. This enables automated resin printing, intricate designs, and fully closed-loop recycling.

I just published my first paper at MIT! We developed a new 3D printing process that enables dissolvable, recyclable support structures. 🧵

@unusual_whales It’d be a lot higher than 14% if they knew how cool manufacturing is x.com/zanehengsperge…

14% of Gen Z said they would consider a career in factory work, according to a report from Soter Analytics.

@jack_watson_hfw One of my top memories working in Taiwan was handing a flash drive to a guy in a greasy polo, in a noisy open-air tooling shop where you could barely hear over the mills - and getting back a mold by the end of the week. All they needed was cheap steel, and they made it work!

Absolutely. Everyone I talk to with intimate knowledge of working in manufacturing in China emphasizes that the vast majority of the manufacturing there isn’t the automated and AI variety. It’s dirty and crude, but they get it done. It’s the access to raw resources quickly that has been a big game changer.

This, times a million. Anyone who says AI and software alone will revive American manufacturing has never spent time in a factory. The US needs to rebuild its supply chain from scratch, starting with raw materials

@mittcoats @StevenGlinert Strikingly accurate parallel. While western investment and training were key for China’s rise, that success was largely enabled by deliberate Chinese industrial policies from around 1980 on - joint ventures, tech-transfer rules, incentives, special economic zones, etc.

Very true. I’m curious how much of this pace is driven by western firm investment, training, and collaboration. A similar pattern happened with American vs British industry in the 1700/1800s. Brits outsourced, Americans stole/absorbed tech, and then American industry took off. Today, is not quite the same. UK and USA cultures are still very similar. USA and China cultures are very different.

Cynical take: We soon might not have to worry that much about Chinese PhD students stealing stuff, because they’re at parity with us in so many fields. This is a worry we should have had a decade ago. Spillt milk now.

@RealChinaCharts Huge losing strategy! If the US focuses only on “advanced tech,” we’ll have zero resiliency. Being fully dependent on another country for any part of a critical supply chain puts our whole system at risk of disruption

@DiacoNick Focusing only on “advanced tech” is a losing strategy.

@mittcoats @StevenGlinert China is already generating IP faster than the US in a ton of fields. They’ve moved past copying and are making huge innovative leaps. Most of the US is still totally unaware of this.

@StevenGlinert Do you think parity stays the same if the IP transfer changes?

@chairmang This argument usually falls on deaf ears because folks in the US have no idea how far ahead China is - it’s hard to conceptualize unless you’ve toured factories in both countries. The American public urgently needs a reality check on our manufacturing capabilities

China not only has more factories, it is also modernizing them faster, with technologies such as 5G private networks for automation. That means it can more quickly and efficiently link manufacturing equipment to designers and users, updating products at speeds that traditional manufacturing can’t achieve. We can’t let this be true in five years. Software-defined manufacturing is the future, the only question is will America get left behind. wsj.com/world/america-…

@Jordan_W_Taylor @zanehengsperger I thought reaction injection molding was hard enough as is, but this sounds insane. Engineers are awesome

@DiacoNick @zanehengsperger I can't say too much, but very tight tolerances, avoidance of microscopic defects, temperature management, very fast cycle times with rapid takeout, FM minimization and complex tool & feed geometry with large arrays moulded at once.

how to get into injection molding in 3 easy steps