Services

SLA resin printing

What's SLA resin printing

SLA (Stereolithography) resin printing is a 3D printing technology that uses a liquid photopolymer resin as the printing material. The resin is cured or hardened by a light source, usually a laser or a UV light, to create the final 3D-printed object. SLA resin printing is a high-precision, high-detail printing method that produces smooth and highly accurate 3D prints with intricate details and fine features. The resin is typically housed in a tank, and a build platform is lowered into the resin. The light source then selectively hardens the resin in layers, building up the object from the bottom up. Once the printing process is complete, the object is removed from the resin tank and cleaned to remove any excess resin. The object is then cured using a UV light to fully harden the material.

 

sample silver button

Resin print process

Resin printing is done in several steps  as described below.

Printing

  • Printing is done by the SLA resin printing machine and it prints layer by layer in a liquid resin tub. Each layer is made by projecting a UV light image onto resin which hardens it in seconds.

Cleaning

  • Cleaning involves washing all the liquid resin out of the printed object using isopropyl alcohol and thoroughly washing it with water.

Curing

  • In this step, all the unwanted support structures are broken away and placed under UV light to harden up more to give strong printed parts.

SLA resin vs FDM 3D printing

We can compare SLA and FDM printing along following aspects,

Price

  • SLA resin printing costs more than FDM 3D printing due to higher material cost and complexity in production process

Quality

  • SLA resin can provide the best quality prints with the highest detail by its 2K resolution image projector used inside the machine.

Print size

  • SLA resin printers cannot print larger objects compared to FDM printing since its maximum print volume is 120mm x 65mm x 160mm.
sample diorama