Effect of the Laser Beam Size on the Cure Properties of a Photopolymer in Stereolithography

Stereolithography (SLA) is a technique using a laser beam to cure a photopolymer liquid resin with three-dimensional computer-aided design (CAD) data, The accuracy of the prototype, the build time, and the cured properties of the resins are controlled by the SLA process parameters such as the size of the laser beam, scan velocity, hatch spacing, and layer thickness, In particular, the size of the laser beam is the most important parameter in SLA, This study investigated the curing properties of photopolymers as a function of the laser beam size, The cure width and depth were measured either on a single cure line or at a single cure layer for various hatch spacings and laser beam sizes, The cure depth ranged from 0.23 to 0.34 mm and was directly proportional to the beam radius, whereas the cure width ranged from 0.42 to 1.07 mm and was inversely proportional to the beam radius, The resulting surface roughness ranged from 1.12 to $2.23{\mu}m$ for a ratio of hatch spacing to beam radius in the range 0.5-2.0 at a beam radius of 0.17 mm and a scan velocity of 125 mm/sec.