Compressive and flexural mechanical responses of components obtained through mSLA vat photopolymerization technology

Abstract

In recent years, Additive Manufacturing (AM) has become an increasingly popular method in industrial applications for fabricating components with complex geometries, offering several benefits over traditional (subtractive) manufacturing methods. Among all available AM technologies, ‘‘vat photopolymerization’’ is still a reliable approach for manufacturing high-resolution components at relatively small costs. This particular AM technology is based on the photopolymerization process where 3D objects are created by light-induced solidification and it has been broadly developed and used in the past decades. Depending on the employed light source there are three different subtypes of this technology, namely: SLA, DLP, and mSLA. Among all three listed, the Masked Stereolithography Apparatus (mSLA) technology has emerged as a promising approach due to the much simpler AM machine construction compared to the other two. However, the mechanical properties of mSLA components have not been studied extensively, hence there is a lack of knowledge of how AM process parameters and post-processing treatments affect the final mechanical properties of mSLA components. This work presents an experimental investigation of the compressive and flexural mechanical responses of components produced through this relatively new AM technology. A series of static and cyclic tests were conducted with varying layer thickness and post-curing times. It is demonstrated that a thorough optimization of the mentioned variables is required to obtain parts with the desired mechanical properties.