alt.hn

2/13/2026 at 8:44:08 PM

Ask HN: Are there examples of 3D printing data onto physical surfaces?

by catapart

2/14/2026 at 7:44:01 AM

How much data do you want to preserve?

I know it sounds “boring” but it is hard to beat a good acid-free archival paper printed with a good quality ink. Stored in the right circumstances (not too humid, dark place, not on fire) it should last half a millennia easily. It is also pretty much guaranteed that whatever happens we will have the technology to read it again.

Exotics like laser engraved metal plates or ceramics might be better if you have a lot of data and can’t guarantee your storage will be fire and flood free. If you don’t have a lot of data you can also think of engraving it into stone or press it into a clay tablet and fire it. These mediums are known to be very stable even in adverse circumstances.

by krisoft

2/15/2026 at 1:55:21 PM

Right on. Simple text/encoded strings weren't really on my mind while imagining the more complicated solution, but you're right that data is probably best preserved with just "printing" rather than 3d printing.

I didn't have an amount in mind, I was just kind of wondering about the hobbyist aspect. Like if I woke up one day and realized I need to archive something and my most readily available tool was a 3d printer, would I have to come up with my own scheme, or has someone already done it?

by catapart

2/14/2026 at 6:18:15 AM

Seems like low data density. I recall some people talking about laser-engraving. IMHO engraving on a solid chemically-inert surface is more likely to be useful.

by arjie

2/15/2026 at 2:02:22 PM

Yeah. I kind of lumped in engraving with 3D printing because the difference is really just a toolhead (simplified; motors, tolerances, etc, but still). But that's part of what the 'specialized tool' part of the question was meant to cover. Like, if you can store data in an additive way, you can obviously store it in a subtractive way. But... is anyone doing that with a 3D printer? Or a CNC machine, for that matter?

I think some of the other answered showed that people are, it's just pretty niche. Not something a hobbyist can (currently) do, but definitely the same idea at a production scale.

by catapart

2/14/2026 at 7:23:41 AM

Like a CD/DVD?

by lukan

2/14/2026 at 11:56:38 AM

That, or a data crystal.

by giantg2

2/14/2026 at 12:05:06 PM

The difference is, that one was (and still is) a widely established product and the other is in prototype stage since decades.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5D_optical_data_storage

by lukan

2/14/2026 at 12:12:51 PM

Yeah, but standard DVDs and CDs degrade in less than the stated 100 years.

by giantg2

2/15/2026 at 8:13:05 AM

Yeah, that's why M-discs were created. Which only displaces the question to "will there still be drives to read them?"...

by nbernard

2/15/2026 at 2:09:59 AM

I run a business that makes 3d printed braille molds that are used to repeatably emboss paper. I haven't considered the molds being offline storage, but I suppose they are. I mostly operate with the assumption of a shelf life of 10 years for the PETG molds, but ink free, embossed paper has excellent lifespan if stored correctly.

I guess you could consider it an "offline datastore as a service." It would be a pretty good offline storage of keys with a way to request a paper copy. Certainly issues of trust and physical security but wrapping it with encryption would be easy. Also benefit from your government's legal protections for mail. There might actually be a usecase here.

Couple fast facts:

- Current 26 * 32 = 832 cells * 6 dot braille = 4992 bits/mold/page

- Possible 28 * 34 = 952 cells * 6 dot braille = 5712 bits/mold/page

- Maybe some more headroom, but that's what is possible with current spacings

by ramity

2/15/2026 at 1:58:59 PM

Oh, very cool! Thanks for chiming in! Lots of good responses, but few that seem to have literal experience with the production. I appreciate the hard numbers. I think that was near the capacity I was assuming.

One or the more interesting things about asking this was seeing all of the types of "storage" that I hadn't even really considered. Braille didn't enter my mind, but of course it's a great analogy!

by catapart

2/14/2026 at 8:13:52 AM

First example I thought of is the titanium punch sheets and wordlists for crypto wallet recovery phrases https://shop.ledger.com/products/cryptotag-zeus and https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0039/bip-003...

There is also Microsoft Project Silica which I recall seeing in person at their EBC playing back a movie from it https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/project/project-sil...

Then there is m-disc which uses the DVD+R and BD-R/BDXL standards but writing to a sort of glass rather than to the traditional medium. These are cool as they play back n regular players too. https://www.mdisc.com/

by simonjgreen

2/14/2026 at 6:31:10 AM

why not print onto paper and put it in a safety deposit box?

your X/Y resolution isnt going to be fantastic woth filament, but your Z is gonna really suck.

you could instead print(emboss?) like a barcode on some paper, and encase that in resin. the big benefit being that you can read it non-destructively. keep it out of the sun so whatever ink doesnt fade and you're set

by 8note

2/14/2026 at 7:26:51 AM

Wouldn't that be just QR codes (and equivalents)? I suppose 3D printers can be used to etch/print them onto a durable material and then have it read back using the measuring tools you mention, but at that point I think you would be better off just 3D-printing out something like a a vinyl disc maker/reader and using that.

by boje

2/14/2026 at 9:45:27 PM

In the abstract, I don't see an obvious practical advantage of 3d steganography over 2d because the tools for 2d (printers and cameras) are more readily accessible and the processes of creation and reading are faster...particularly reading.

There might be corner cases where 3d makes sense...but it is hard to compete with decals/stickers, and 2d steganography can also use color and saturation as additional data dimensions.

But I could be wrong.

by brudgers

2/14/2026 at 7:22:03 AM

To satisfy the "disk" condition, would a vinyl record suit your needs?

by humdaanm

2/15/2026 at 2:05:13 PM

I think vinyl would, but as others have noted, it probably wouldn't satisfy the "3D printed" condition.

I know this wasn't in the original ask, but my focus was on what I would be able to do, as far as archival storage, if I had a 3D printer. The assumption being that it's easier for me to have, maintain, and use a 3D printer than it would be for me to have a vinyl press.

by catapart

2/14/2026 at 7:33:07 AM

I read somewhere about people using 3D printers to make vinyl records.

by loandbehold

2/14/2026 at 7:40:49 AM

Wasn’t that an april fool joke ?

by j_leboulanger

2/14/2026 at 7:57:44 AM

There are M-Disks. These are CD/DVD/BluRay disks which use a drive with a higher power laser and work by ablating a metal layer, rather than a photosensitive dye as in the lower-powered disks. Regular drives will read both kinds.

For a small amount of data (crypto keys?), consider deep laser engraving on stainless steel. That's very durable. Or even engrave text into stainless steel with a small CNC mill.

You can engrave QR codes, bar codes, etc. But there's a lot to be said for engraving plain text.

by Animats

2/14/2026 at 11:58:56 AM

Just get a set of alpha numeric punches and blank dog tags for crypto keys. Much cheaper than engraving.

by giantg2

2/14/2026 at 7:49:31 PM

Good answer. A set of punches is about $25, and a manual dog tag stamping machine (set wheel to desired character, pull lever) is about $250. That will get you a tough piece of metal.

by Animats

2/14/2026 at 9:18:38 AM

3D printing (additive manufacturing) usually involves layers that tend to be a weak point.

If you want something truly long lasting you might find substractive manufacturing techniques like CNC milling better. Indeed there are solutions from companies like Cryptotag for punching cryptographic seed data into plates / blocks of titanium. Something like this could be automated with a CNC router to store a bunch more data.

by barnabee

2/14/2026 at 4:07:19 PM

This was solved with M-DISC. The data is literally glassy carbon pits. http://www.microscopy-uk.org.uk/mag/artsep16/mol-mdisc-revie...

by 1970-01-01

2/15/2026 at 2:06:42 PM

Right on. The only problem with M-DISC is that it's industrial only and most certainly not free for public use.

I know that isn't relevant to the question I asked, as stated, but the focus was on 3D printing because it is something any person could do, rather than something that has to be manufactured by specialized equipment.

by catapart

2/14/2026 at 12:11:39 PM

Best choice will be thick metal medium, such as stainless steel.

Probably use a 177x177 QR code with Q or H error correction engraved (deeply). I would probably compress the data and encode it as Hex so it can be stored in alphanumeric mode on the QR. You might need a series of QRs for larger data.

by giantg2

2/15/2026 at 2:09:50 PM

I completely hadn't considered the idea that QR codes could be made 3D (in fact, now I'm curious how much denser they can get, if you can both read and write them in 3D), but now that people have said it, it seems so obvious! I really like your follow up about using the error-correcting properties of it. A great feature that would be very unlikely to be realized in amateur 3d data implementation.

by catapart

2/14/2026 at 7:27:28 AM

Some sort of wire recorder? The teeth of the 3d printer ‘driver’ (sorry lost on the terminology here) already make an imprint on the filament, maybe it could be made intentional

by thenthenthen

2/15/2026 at 2:12:24 PM

Wow! Now that's some outside the box thinking. That even seems to suggest that "watermarking" a print (or a small, hard to notice part of a print) would be possible.

I also think you could get denser storage that way? I guess depending upon how thick the "wire" is? But it's an interesting idea for both just printing the wire, and for the driver-teeth imprinting, separately. Very cool!

by catapart

2/16/2026 at 3:55:48 AM

Not sure how it will survive extrusion. But yeah, the wire is a cylinder so you can ‘imprint’ multple ‘sides’. Another idea, some form of anti temper encryption like little particles (flock) inside the filament (like those colored rice anti temper methods)

by thenthenthen

2/14/2026 at 7:01:48 AM

You could print an old-school punch card, bring it full circle.

by ungreased0675

2/14/2026 at 7:14:22 AM

Depending on how you define 3D printing: braille.

by biot