Masked stereolithography is a form of vat photopolymerisation additive manufacturing that presents an economically accessible and effective technology for the fabrication of high-resolution network polymer products. The technology utilises a UV LED array that is spatially masked using an LCD screen to selectively polymerise monomers in a layer-by-layer fashion. Most masked stereolithography 3D printers employ a 405 nm UV light source, and homogenous polymers are printed using the technology. However, certain chemical reactions can be orthogonally polymerised at specific wavelengths (e.g. 365 nm, 405 nm, 450 nm), opening an opportunity to fabricate multi-materials with spatially defined properties. Polymeric multi-materials present useful applications within the development numerous fields, such as soft robotics, biomedical engineering, and shape memory and self-healing polymers. On the other hand, very few multi-wavelength 3D printers are commercially available and are prohibitively expensive. As such, this project aims to begin development of the first economically accessible and opensource multi-wavelength masked stereolithography 3D printer using the Lite3DP platform shown in Figure 1, below.
Figure 1. Lite3DP platform
The Lite3DP 3D printer has been developed with a completely open source and “hackable” ethos, using a ESP32 microcontroller and Arduino libraries for its operation, thus making it a highly attractive technology for further development. This project will entail the design and implementation of a prototype multi-wavelength SLA printer based on the Lite3DP platform.
Embedded systems, control design, additive manufacturing.
1x MSc (Eng), 2x Journal/Conference paper in a leading publication.
James Hepworth James Dicks