Controlling anisotropy in stereolithographically printed polymers

Excerpt

The ability to print three-dimensional objects was first developed in the 1980s and was originally strictly limited to polymeric materials. Through most of the intervening years, the approach has been thought of as a rapid prototyping method. This allowed low volume, high fidelity structures to be quickly fabricated to test things like fit and finish. However, more recently the term additive manufacturing has entered usage to represent the same methods and implies that the field is transitioning to creating finished parts. When we begin to think about these techniques as a real manufacturing approach, then the materials properties achieved during manufacture become much more important. This is true for all materials, as additive manufacturing has grown to encompass structures formed from metals and ceramics, but the bulk of work remains centered on polymers. …