Adaptive Layer Height During DLP Materials Processing

The aim of this research is to show how manufacturing speeds during vat polymerisation can be vastly increased through an adaptive layer heightstrategy that takes the geometry into account through analysis of the relationship between layer height, cross-section variability and surface structure. This allows for considerable process speedup during the Additive Manufacture of components that contain areas of low cross-section variability, at no loss of surface quality. The adaptive slicing strategy was tested with a purpose built vat polymerisation system and numerical engine designed and constructed to serve as a Next-Gen technology platform. By means of assessing hemispherical manufactured test specimen and through 3D surface mapping with variable-focus microscopy and confocal microscopy, a balance between minimal loss of surface quality with a maximal increase of manufacturing rate has been identified as a simple angle-dependent rule. The achievable increase in manufacturing rate was above 38% compared to conventional part slicing.Published versio

A Self-Peeling Vat for Improved Release Capabilities During DLP Materials Processing

This paper describe research to increase the competitiveness of vat polymerisation by increasing the manufacturing rate while lowering the normal forces that induce part stress during the lift procedure of vat based systems. This is achieved through introducing a polymerisation vat that allows for an eased release of the manufactured part from the vat by means of a flexible membrane system. A membrane of fluorinated ethylene polymer will through elastic deformation automatically peel off the part as the part is lifted during layer changes. Peeling has been qualified by means of a truncated inverted cone as test geometry. As the cross-sectional diameter of the cone increase throughout the build-job, the geometry will release from the glass based build platform at the point where the peeling force exceed the adhesion force between platform and part. At failure point the lateral surface area of the top and bottom of the truncated cone is used as a measure of the performance of the vat with respect to release-capability. This has been tested at increasing manufacturing rates. The new self-peeling vat outperformed industrial state-of-the-art vats by 814% percent.Published versio

Dynamic in situ chromosome immobilisation and DNA extraction using localized poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) phase transition

A method of in situ chromosome immobilisation and DNA extraction in a microfluidic polymer chip was presented. Light-induced local heating was used to induce poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) phase transition in order to create a hydrogel and embed a single chromosome such that it was immobilised. This was achieved with the use of a near-infrared laser focused on an absorption layer integrated in the polymer chip in close proximity to the microchannel. It was possible to proceed to DNA extraction while holding on the chromosome at an arbitrary location by introducing protease K into the microchannel

In-process 3D geometry reconstruction of objects produced by direct light projection

Additive manufacturing allows close-to unrestrained geometrical freedom in part design. The ability to manufacture geometries of such complexity is howeverlimited by the difficulty of verifying the tolerances of these parts. Tolerances of features that are inaccessible with traditional measuring equipment such as coordinate measuring machines cannot be verified easily. This problem is addressed by developing an in-line reverse engineering and 3D reconstruction method that allows a true-to-scale reconstruction of a part being additively manufactured. In earlier works (Pedersen et al. 2010; Hansen et al. 2011), this method has shown its potential with 3D printing (3DP) and selective laser sintering additive manufacturing processes, where it is possible to directly capture the geometrical features of each individual layer during a build job using a digital camera. When considering the process of direct light projection (DLP), the possibility of directly capturing the geometrical features of the object during a build job is limited by the specific machine design and the fact that photoactivated monomers often do not change optical characteristics in the polymerization process. Therefore, a variant of the previously tested and verified method has been implemented on DLP machine, where instead of capturing the geometrical features of the produced objects during the build job directly, these features are captured indirectly by capturing the reflection of the projected light projected during the build job. Test series were made, and a reconstruction of two octave spheres were produced and compared with the input CAD file and scans of the produced objects. The comparison showed a good correlation between the reconstructions and the scans considering the resolution of the images used for the reconstruction, and it was thereby concluded that the method has a promising potential as a verification method for DLP machines