Fabrication of medium scale 3D components using a stereolithography system for rapid prototyping

A cost-effective stereolithography for medium-scale components is developed to fabricate 3D components with high build speed and resolution from photo-curable resin. The developed SLA utilizes a focused light beam of wavelength range (300 nm–700 nm) coming from the DLP projector and passes through the objective lens and finally imposed on the platform containing a layer of photo-curable resin. After focusing the light beam on the liquid resin layer, the photo-polymerization reaction occurs and the liquid resin becomes solid. Thus, the 3D object is fabricated layer by layer curing of liquid resin. The photopolymer used in this experimentation is polyethylene glycol di-acrylate and Irgacure 784 as photo-initiator. The Creo 3.0 software is used for modelling of 3D objects. A special MATLAB code is developed for slicing of the 3D model and displaying the sliced image one by one through DLP projector. The Arduino microcontroller with stepper motor and ball screw is used to control the motion of Z-stage platform. The Creation workshop software is also used to control motion of the Z-stage and period to display the sliced images through DLP projector. The medium-scale 3D objects with rectangular, square, and circular cross-sections are obtained by curing the aforementioned photo-curable resin. It is observed that the 3D objects are best cured for two seconds curing time with 0.1 mm curing depth along Z-axis.