Research is being performed on a laser sintering process in which inorganic filler is
employed as porogen at a high content to fabricate highly porous three dimensional
tissue engineering scaffold. Previously, the scaffold, which included capillary like flow
channel network, was used in cell culture test, but obtained cell density was limited due
to insufficient fineness of the network structure. In the scaffold fabrication the author
experienced degradation of process resolution when inorganic filler was introduced at a
high content, but reasons for the low resolution has not been cleared. This paper
investigates the dominating cause of the low resolution. Discussion is focused on effect
of optical and thermal properties of filler. Experiments using transparent and opaque
fillers are performed, and existence of dominating effect of difference in the optical
property is denied. Experiments using thermally conductive solid filler and insulating
hollow filler is performed, and it is concluded that temperature conductivity is
dominating on process resolution.Mechanical Engineerin
