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As we all know, light-cured 3D printing technology is a relatively fast 3D printing technology, but do you know what factors will affect the speed of light-cured 3D printing? In fact, setting the appropriate print speed is very helpful for improving the print success rate and improving the manufacturing efficiency. But it is not that easy to control the print speed, especially for novices. Before you can control the printing speed, you need to understand - what factors affect the printing speed of light-cured 3D printers? Now let me will come to introduce you one by one.

Printing technology

With different 3D printing technologies, the 3D printing speed will be different, and the main light-curing 3D printing technology is divided into three categories - SLA, DLP and LCD technology. Compared with SLA technology, DLP and LCD technology have the same advantage that is the print speed. These two printing technologies are clearly faster to form base printing. This is because the DLP/LCD 3D printer is a face-form with one layer one time, and the SLA technology is laser spot molding.

SLA printer structure

DLP printer structure

LCD printer structure

The printer itself

If the printer has a preset speed, then the print speed will not exceed the speed of this setting.

Another speed factor associated with light-curing 3D printing is the speed at which the system prints at each layer. When using some printers, the light source passes through the bottom of the transparent resin tank, and the freshly cured resin requires a cumbersome stripping process and then continues to cure a new layer. Some manufacturers will let the system quickly complete the stripping process to increase printing speed. Another way to eliminate this kind of trouble is to cure on top of the resin level instead of the bottom.

Light source intensity

Resin printing is to use a light source to cure a photosensitive liquid resin to print a 3D model. The three main resin-printing techniques differ in the light source used to cure the resin.

The print speed depends on the intensity of the light source used. You can increase the speed of the print by increasing the intensity of the light source, but this also means that an additional cost will be occurred.

Layer thickness

The layer thickness affects both the printing speed and the quality of the model. The layer thickness required to print the model determines the printing speed and the time required for printing. The thinner the layer thickness, the more time it takes to print a 3D model of the same height, because when the total height is constant, the thinner the layer thickness, it means that the printer needs to print more layers, so that the printing time will take naturally longer. But in contrast, the thinner the layer thickness, the higher the quality of the finished product will be.

Printing materials

The speed of a 3D printer also depends on the type of material being printed. The combination of different monomers, prepolymers, photoinitiators and various other additives directly leads to different properties of the material and different curing times.

Models

The model itself also affects the printing speed. If the model is hollow and there are no more complicated details, the print will be much faster. Proper placement of the model can also affect print speed. In general, if printing the same model horizontally compared to vertical, printing work will be much faster, but the accuracy may be reduced.

These are some of the factors that affect the speed of 3D printing. During the process of additive manufacturing, the factors affecting the speed of printing may be more complicated, far more than that. At the same time, the printing speed is a multiple-choice question that needs to be chosen. Once the printing speed is increased, the printing quality is likely to decrease. How to weigh the pros and cons of all parties depends on the real situation.