2023-05-30
Not to be confused with SLS, SLA printing stands for Stereolithography. An SLA printer uses a vat of liquid photopolymer. That’s a scientific way to describe a light-sensitive liquid. Under exposure to visible or ultraviolet light, the liquid in this vat wants to change its state and become solid.
There’s a laser in each SLA printer that gets shone against a scanning mirror. The mirror will make slight movements around, and the laser will subsequently change direction and hit different parts of the liquid photopolymer vat.
Once the laser comes in contact with the liquid, it will start to solidify the liquid. The build platform then moves further from the laser, and another layer is built. This continues until the entire 3D part is made.
It takes further exposure to UV light for the part to solidify and entirely cure. For harder and more thermally resistant units, the finished part might need to go through a UV treatment.
The liquid used in the vat translates to what material the part is made out of.
As you might imagine, SLA printers have features from different types of 3D printers that we offer at 7-swords. It seemingly borrows concepts to allow parts to be versatile, low-cost, fast, and highly accurate. Believe it or not, SLA printers are one of the first additive manufacturing machines invented, so all subsequent printers take ideas from the SLA platform.
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