Stereolithography (SLA) and Digital Light Processing (DLP) for Flexible and Sustainable Micro-manufacturing

A special issue of Micromachines (ISSN 2072-666X). This special issue belongs to the section "D3: 3D Printing and Additive Manufacturing".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 November 2024 | Viewed by 1702

Special Issue Editors


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Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche—Institute of Intelligent Industrial Technologies and Systems for Advanced Manufacturing (STIIMA), 20133 Milano, Italy
Interests: manufacturing; micro manufacturing; micro machining; additive manufacturing; stereolithography; nanocomposite materials
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Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The demand for miniaturized components and parts with complex microscale features is continuously increasing in several sectors, e.g., electronics, medical, consumer goods, microfluidics, optics, automotive and aerospace. However, such objects still represent a challenge from a manufacturing point of view.

When considering polymeric materials, complex 3D microparts could be efficiently manufactured using the traditional Additive Manufacturing processes with some specific adjustments for the microscale. Among these technologies, vat photopolymerization processes (such as both stereolithography and digital light processing) are very promising since they allow one to achieve a very high resolution and an excellent part quality. Moreover, these processes can be exploited for the easy, cost-effective, flexible and sustainable rapid prototyping of customized microparts, since they do not require time consumption and costs for tooling. Eventually, embedding micro/nano particles in the photocuring resin allows one to improve the material’s properties and even to create smart materials (i.e. materials that can be modified by external stimuli) that are customized for specific applications, such as shape-morphing components, programmable materials, thermomagnetically responsive actuators and grippers, soft robotics, etc.

Accordingly, this Special Issue seeks to showcase research papers and review articles that focus on the novel advancements and applications of micro stereolithography and digital light processing techniques, including the topics of the process characterization and optimization, sustainability assessment and LCA, and the development of advanced materials.

Dr. Lara Rebaioli
Dr. Irene Fassi
Guest Editors

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Keywords

  • micromanufacturing
  • additive manufacturing
  • 3D printing
  • stereolithography
  • digital light processing
  • advanced materials
  • smart materials
  • sustainability
  • life cycle assessment (LCA)

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

12 pages, 4226 KiB  
Article
Displacement Mapping as a Highly Flexible Surface Texturing Tool for Additively Photopolymerized Components
by Robert Bail and Dong Hyun Lee
Micromachines 2024, 15(5), 575; https://doi.org/10.3390/mi15050575 - 26 Apr 2024
Viewed by 1192
Abstract
Displacement mapping is a computer graphics technique that enables the design of components with regularly or randomly textured surfaces that can be quickly materialized on a three-dimensional (3D) printer when needed. This approach is, in principle, more flexible, faster, and more economical compared [...] Read more.
Displacement mapping is a computer graphics technique that enables the design of components with regularly or randomly textured surfaces that can be quickly materialized on a three-dimensional (3D) printer when needed. This approach is, in principle, more flexible, faster, and more economical compared to conventional texturing methods, but the accuracy of the texture depends heavily on the parameters used. The purpose of this study is to demonstrate how to produce a surface-textured part using polygonal (mesh) modeling software and a photopolymerizable resin and to develop a universal methodology to predict the dimensional accuracy of the model file log combined with a resin 3D printer. The printed components were characterized on a scanning confocal microscope. In the setup used in this study, the mesh size had to be reduced to 10% of the smallest feature size, and the textured layer had to be heavily (×4.5) overexposed to achieve the desired accuracy. As a practical application, two functional stamps with a regular (honeycomb) and a random texture, respectively, were successfully manufactured. The insights gained will be of great benefit for quickly and cost-effectively producing components with innovative patterns and textures for a variety of hobby, industrial, and biomedical applications. Full article
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