Metallic Stereolithography

The rising of consumers’ demands and an ever increasing pressure of international markets imposed a deep change in the product development process to respond to an increasing product complexity and higher quality, as well to the need to promptly introduce products into the market. Stereolithography plays an important role on this new product development context. This technology produces models for thermosetting resins through a polymerisation process that transforms liquid resins into solid materials. In this work, a new route to produce metallic parts through stereolithography is explored. The curing analysis of hybrid reinforced polymeric systems, polymerised through radicalar or/and cationic mechanisms, is investigated. The rheological behaviour of these polymeric systems is also evaluated due to its importance for recoating. The influence of other processing and material characteristics like light intensity, initiator concentration, powder size of metallic powders, degree of dilution, etc. is also investigated.