Quadratic 3D has been hiding in plain sight.
The Massachusetts company has been working on volumetric 3D printing since 2019, yet it has maintained a much lower public profile than firms such as xolo and Readily3D. Quadratic is now based in Charlestown, Massachusetts, after earlier operating in nearby Somerville, and describes its objective as industrial-scale mass customization using very fast, support-free volumetric printing.
The company’s technical roots are interesting. Quadratic grew out of work at Harvard involving co-founder Sam Sanders and Daniel Congreve, now a Stanford professor and still identified as a Quadratic co-founder and scientific advisor. One of its earliest directions was unusual even by volumetric printing standards: photon upconversion.
In that approach, the resin contained nanocapsules able to absorb lower-energy red light and emit higher-energy blue light. A red laser could pass harmlessly through most of the resin, but at the focal point the intensity became high enough to trigger upconversion. The resulting blue light then initiated polymerization. An NSF-backed Quadratic project described this as a way to achieve true 3D addressing with much lower optical power than conventional two-photon polymerization.
But that doesn’t appear to be the whole story anymore.
Quadratic’s subsequent patent portfolio shows a second architecture built around two wavelengths and intersecting light fields. One source produces a thin light sheet through the resin. A second projector sends a two-dimensional image into that plane from another direction. The resin is formulated with a dual-wavelength, photoswitchable photoinitiator, so curing occurs only where the two exposures coincide.
If that sounds familiar, it should. Xolo’s xolography also uses a dual-color photoinitiator, a thin light sheet and an orthogonal projected image. Xolo moves a resin-filled cuvette continuously through a fixed light sheet while displaying a synchronized sequence of cross-sections. The object effectively appears inside the resin as the vat moves through the optical plane.
Quadratic’s patents describe more flexibility in how that plane can be generated and moved. In one implementation, a digital micromirror device creates the light sheet and can electronically sweep it through the resin by illuminating successive lines, potentially avoiding mechanical translation of the optics. Other filings describe partial or adaptive light sheets intended to illuminate only the regions actually required, reducing unwanted activation of the photoswitchable chemistry.
That also separates Quadratic from tomographic systems such as computed axial lithography and Readily3D’s technology. Those systems project many calculated images into a rotating cylindrical volume, gradually accumulating enough light dose in selected regions to solidify an entire 3D shape. Quadratic’s current approach is closer to a rapidly swept series of internal planes.
There’s another difference: Quadratic seems to be treating the resin chemistry, optics and machine as one tightly coupled system. Its patent activity covers photoinitiators, resin rheology, light-sheet calibration, exposure correction, cartridges and printer hardware. That suggests the challenge isn’t merely proving volumetric printing works, but making it repeatable enough for production.
What we don’t yet have is a conventional product launch. Quadratic’s website describes the technology and a substantial technical team, but currently provides no named printer, build volume, resolution, price or public ordering information. Xolo, by comparison, openly markets several systems with detailed specifications.
Quadratic 3D therefore looks less like a newly arrived volumetric printing company than one that has been quietly engineering the difficult parts for several years.
It will be worth watching what finally emerges from Charlestown.
Via Quadratic 3D
