Highly removable water support for Stereolithography

Abstract

Current stereolithography (SL) technology can print there-dimensional (3D) objects with high precision and fast speed. However, for a complex computer-aided design (CAD) model, the fabricated structures have a significant amount of additional support structures that are required in order to ensure the model can be fabricated. However, these support structures may be difficult to remove. Even worse, the removal of the support structures may cause unexpected damage to delicate features and leave undesired surface marks. Although some special materials have been utilized in support structures such as water-soluble materials for the fused deposition modeling (FDM) process and wax for the multi-jet modeling (MJM) process, such support materials have not been available for the SL process. In this paper, a novel SL process using highly removable and widely available water as supports is presented. The process uses solid ice to surround the built parts in the layer-by-layer fabrication process. A cooling device is used to freeze the water into ice for each layer. The photocurable resin is spread on ice surface and then solidified by a projection image. Accordingly, a complex 3D object can be fabricated without using traditional support structures. After the fabrication process, the additional ice structure can easily be removed leaving no undesired marks on the bottom surfaces. Two test cases are presented to show the effectiveness of the presented highly removable water support method.