Vegetable oils-derived resins for stereolithography


Stereolithography is based on the photopolymerization of liquid monomers by using light (UV or visible). Normally the monomers are products derived from non-renewable sources and furthermore most of them could give health concerns. For this reason we have developed monomers starting from vegetable oils.

vegetable-oils

The challenge was also to find a suitable photoinitiator for the polymerization reaction under visible light. In fact, the idea was to use a normal digital projector for the assembly of the 3D-printer.

VEGETABLE OILS

The product obtained (figure below, on the left) shows interesting thermal resistance.

thermal-resistance