Revolutionizing 3D Printing: The Birth of Cilllia

Jifei Ou's MIT Media Lab Unveils a New Dimension in 3D Printing Technology

From the warmth and touch sensitivity of animal fur to the adhesion and locomotion properties of plant hair, hair-like structures across species have inspired the creation of Cilllia. This innovative technology allows for the design and generation of hair geometry at a 50-micrometer resolution, enabling the creation of super fine surface textures, mechanical adhesion properties, new passive actuators, and touch sensors on a 3D printed artifact.

The Cilllia project, which started in February 2015 and concluded in May 2016 in Boston, has been recognized for its unique properties and strengths in the field of 3D printing. The technology bypasses the time-consuming process of drawing and translating thousands of individual hairs into a mesh of tiny triangles using conventional computer-aided design software. Instead, Cilllia's voxel-based printing software platform enables users to define the angle, thickness, density, and height of thousands of hairs in just a few minutes.

The printed hair can serve various functions. It can act as an adhesive surface similar to Velcro, an actuated surface to move objects in designed paths, or a sensing surface to detect user touch and swipe. The technology was realized using stereolithography 3D printing, with a voxel-based model generation method developed to instruct the printer to print various hair geometry and structures. Each sample is approximately 40 by 60 by 60 mm and can be assembled together to form larger designs.

Despite the challenges of creating many thousands of small hairs with real geometry using conventional CAD systems, the team successfully developed a method for 3D printing hair-like structures on both flat and curved surfaces. The data for describing the total geometry becomes extremely large, and rendering such complex structures can also be computationally expensive. However, these obstacles were overcome, leading to the creation of Cilllia.

The project envisions a future where physical materials’ properties and functions, whether electrical or mechanical, can be encoded in the material fabrication process directly by users. This vision was recognized at the A' 3D Printed Forms and Products Design Award in 2017, where Cilllia was awarded the Golden A' Design Award for its marvelous, outstanding, and trendsetting creation that advances art, science, design, and technology.