3D Printing is not just about the printer, SoonSer helps you to choose right printing material

For engineers and product designers looking to enhance their manufacturing processes by adopting or increasing their use of 3D printing, the importance of materials selection can't be overstated. Yet with an array of options, selecting the best material for a given product can be daunting. Hence materials advancement is the single most important thing to keep growing 3D printing.

Proper selection of these advanced materials starts with asking questions about the target properties for the part's end use. The main considerations are knowing the part's desired tensile strength, its tensile modulus or stiffness, its elongation or ductility, the desired hardness, and heat deflection temperature.Various materials will have different ratings for those criteria and even the same material can perform differently based on its quality and how it was produced.

Here is some basic knowledge about resins and its unique properties:        

Standard SLA Resins

Standard Resin. Standard resin offers rigid, high-resolution prints with a smooth surface finish. Standard resin is very affordable, which makes it an excellent option for rapid prototyping applications. One exciting aspect of standard SLA resin is that its color has some degree of bearing over its properties.

Clear Resin

Clear resin has the ability to be near transparent after post-processing. Clear resin has similar mechanical properties to standard resin, which means it’s great for rapid prototypes with intricate details. Additionally, clear resin offers smooth surface finishes.

Engineering SLA Resins

Engineering resins can produce parts and prototypes similar to injection-molded plastic parts. It’s important to note that all engineering resins must undergo post-curing under UV light in order to obtain optimal mechanical properties.

Tough Resin

Tough resin is intended for applications that involve high degrees of stress and applied force. In this respect, tough resins are similar to ABS. In fact, parts that are SLA printed with tough resin have tensile strength of 55.7 MPa and a modulus of elasticity of 2.7 GPa—both of which are similar to ABS material.

Durable Resin

As the name implies, durable resin is extremely resistant to wear and tear. It’s also very flexible, which makes its properties similar to that of polypropylene (PP). Additionally, durable resins offer very smooth surface finishes, which makes them a great option for rapid prototyping consumer products, low friction moving parts, and ball joints.

Heat Resistant Resin

Heat-resistant resins are excellent candidates for SLA 3D printing applications that demand high thermal stability and the toleration of high temperatures. Specifically, heat-resistant resins provide a heat deflection temperature between 100–120°C.

Flexible Resin

Flexible resin enables product and part engineers to mimic rubber parts. As such, flexible resin offers high elongation at break and a low tensile modulus. These properties make this resin an excellent candidate for parts that will be compressed or bent.

Rigid Ceramic-Filled Resin

These resins are reinforced with ceramic particles such as glass, which produces a high degree of rigidity and smooth surfaces in the prints. Plus, rigid resins offer thermal stability and heat resistance. Moreover, these resins resist deformation over time.

At SoonSer we collaborate with a several leading resin manufacturers providing our end user with wide range of materials choice to meet different printing needs.         

High Performance Engineering Material by SoonSer

SP-HP1301 heatproof resin is of low viscosity and high reactivity, as well as great heat resistance, it offers a heat deflection temperature (HDT) of 116℃ @ 0.45 MPa, which can be used to manufacture functional prototypes with high temperature resistance. SP-HP1301 also has a great tensile resistance, which guarantees the quality of complex parts.

This type of resin is highly suitable to manufacture customized hot air or fluid flow pipe connector. In some special situation, traditional manufacturing can be time consuming and costly because of the pipe design, however, with 3D printing technology available this can be easily done. For example, the pipe connector illustration shown above had a 90-degree angle with a narrower drip flow at the middle of angled area. Nevertheless, 3D printing is just not about 3D printer, but the materials that fits the printer is the key for producing desired deliverables. 

Feel free to contact us via info@soonser.com.