New X-rays can basically 'film' the inside of stuff as it melts at a wild 25,000 frames per second.
arXiv · March 17, 2026 · 2603.14391
The Takeaway
3D printing with lasers happens so fast that seeing how the liquid ceramic or metal actually flows internally has been impossible. By using a new multi-beam approach and AI, scientists can now watch the formation of microscopic bubbles and 'keyholes' in 3D, providing a view 250 times faster than the previous world record for imaging these processes.
From the abstract
Advancing additive manufacturing, e.g., laser powder-bed fusion (LPBF), requires resolving rapid processes such as melt-pool dynamics and keyhole evolution in 4D (3D + time). Operando X-ray tomography is a state-of-the-art approach for 4D characterization, but its temporal resolution is fundamentally constrained by the sample rotation speed, limiting achievable 4D imaging rates and preventing the resolution of these fast phenomena. Here we present rotation-enabled X-ray Multi-Projection Imaging