Abstract
Translucent plastics are commonly used in packaging of mechanical and/or electrical components. Although Rapid Prototyping(RP) provides prototypes of various materials, translucent RP parts are not readily available from most RP processes. ABSi is one of the ABS materials available for Stratasys' FDM process, and the material had potential to be translucent. In this paper, two post-processing techniques were applied in order to increase optical transmissivity of the parts made of FDM's ABSi. First, elevated temperature condition was applied resulting in increased transmissivity while dimensional shrinkage was observed. Second, resin infiltration and surface sanding provided up tp 16 ％ transmissivity without shrinkage. These post-processes can be selectively applied to increase transmissivity of ABSi parts. Thus, translucent FDM part can be fabricated from regular FDM process followed by the post-processes developed in this study.
