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US 3D Printing Breakthrough Builds Realistic Human Hand Model Inexpensively

3D Printing

Business Honor
03 Febuary, 2026

University of Texas Researchers Develop Groundbreaking Technique for Molecular-Level Material Manipulation and Design.

Researchers at The University of Texas at Austin have developed a sustainable 3D printing technology called CRAFT, which will fundamentally change the way we create materials. As part of his role as associate professor, Zak Page leads a research team that has developed a new method of transforming liquid resin into a material that will behave like a chameleon; enabling them to create objects with extremely precise measurements on a molecular scale in both mechanical and optical characteristics. Similar to how a coach builds strategies for athletes to perform at their best, this team now has the ability to control the characteristics of the resultant materials at a pixel-level using only one material and the skill to make that material usable for various applications and services.

One of the most exciting advances CRAFT brings is its potential for transforming the way medical professionals are trained. The research team is capable of producing a hyper-realistic synthetic human hand that imitates the very fine surface structure of the skin, the fine textures of ligaments, tendons, and bones, so students in surgical programs can train on something far less expensive than a cadaver and- even better- have something less complicated to deal with in terms of ethical issues and other concerns associated with the use of cadavers for training.

Using gray scale images, researchers have been able to alter the amount of light passed through the images enabling the creation of materials that possess very different properties throughout the same piece of material. "The precision we have in material systems in three dimensions will allow us to manipulate the molecular order of the material in three-dimensional space," said Page.