Development of a color photo-curable 3D printing mechatronics system by using multiple piezoelectric heads

Abstract

The 3D printing, also called additive manufacturing, is a combination of three-dimensional digital design technology, material science, digital manufacturing and intelligent control of a mechatronics system etc. The main purpose of this study is to develop a color photo-curable 3D manufacturing system by using multiple Piezoelectric heads. Four different colors (CMYW) of curable materials (UV resin) were developed first. This study has finished system integration of color mixing, piezo material process, CMYW curable process of and multi-inkjet head control etc. The proposed system can provide colorful 3D object printing solutions. From the experimental results with multiple piezo-heads (150dpi each), the developed color 3D printing technique can achieve the resolution of 300 dpi and 256 colors. This study also complies with the future development trend and market's requirements of color 3D additive manufacturing product.