Preparation and Characterization of Color Photocurable Resins for Full-Color Material Jetting Additive Manufacturing.

Yih-Lin Cheng,Kuan-Chi Huang

doi:10.3390/polym12030650

Abstract

Material jetting (MJ)-type 3D printers have been considered as one of the most versatile types of 3D printers, enabling full-color printing and multi-material printing. However, to the best of our knowledge, there are few academic studies on the development of full-color MJ technologies, and the formulation of commercial resins is confidential and proprietary. In this paper, we give an insight into the preparation of photocurable resins in the primary CMYKW (cyan, magenta, yellow, black, and white) colors that are printable with the multiple piezoelectric heads of our homemade MJ full-color 3D printer. The components comprising the resins, such as the photo-initiator, oligomers, monomers, and crosslinkers, were methodically adjusted and characterized to achieve high-performance MJ printable resins. Subsequently, the prepared resins were colored with the CMYKW colors and their ability of high-quality color appearance in full-color printing was demonstrated.

Highlights

Additive manufacturing (AM), the building of parts layer by layer, is commonly recognized as 3D printing
A binder jetting (BJ)-type full-color printer is equipped with inkjet print heads for binders in the four CMYK primary colors
Primary color resins for full-color material jetting (MJ) printing were prepared by mixing the preformed photocurable resins with commercially available pigment inks in the CMYKW colors for 6 h and filtered with a 1 μm filter head before placing color resins in the bottles for further testing

Summary

Introduction

Additive manufacturing (AM), the building of parts layer by layer, is commonly recognized as 3D printing. Along with the achieved shape and geometric realization, the color realization of the printed parts has become significantly tempting, especially for people in the fields of art, reproduction, mapping, medicine, education, etc. [6,7,8] There are some commercially available full-color 3D printers in the binder jetting (BJ), sheet lamination, and material jetting (MJ) categories, classified by ISO/ASTM 52900 [9]. A BJ-type full-color printer is equipped with inkjet print heads for binders in the four CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow, and black) primary colors. The binders are selectively jetted over the pre-deposited powder layer, defining the shape and colors. The representatives are 3D Systems’ family of ProJet CJP x60 3D printers [10]

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