A Study on Improvement of Strength by using Photopolymer Resin in the 3DP Process

3DP (three dimensional printing) technology is one of SFF (solid freeform fabrication) technologies which have recently come into a spotlight due to its adaptability to various applications. This technology has a great advantage of enabling high speed printing to be done on the basis of the ink-jet technology and the system to be constructed at a low cost. However, it has also the disadvantage of requiring a curing time after solid freeform fabrication and in additionally a post-processing process is inevitably to increase the mechanical strength of the product. In this study, a novel 3DP process is proposed to overcome slow solidification and elaborate post-process by adopting photocuring method into the conventional 3DP process. Mechanical properties, such as tensile and bending strengths, of specimens fabricated with the proposed 3DP process were measured and compared with those fabricated with the conventional 3DP process. As a result, it is found that mechanical strengths of specimens from the proposed novel 3DP process show three times higher than those from the conventional 3DP process. Besides, the overall fabrication time with the proposed novel 3DP process is about two times faster than that with the conventional 3DP process, because it does not need additional curing and post-processing time