MicroFine Green – When Detail Matters
With the exclusive launch of our new ABS like resin, MicroFine Green, and the development of specialised stereolithography (SL) equipment, you can now prototype your fine detailed part to ensure that it is optimised before committing to tooling.
Attention to detail matters and until now if you needed micro resolution parts with extremely fine details then your options were extremely limited.
Whether you needed it for medical, research labs or consumer electronics, your only answer was to compromise. You had to take a chance, either order the tooling, build with higher tolerances or rely on more expensive production processes.
- 1 to 50+ parts
- Shipped in 1 to 7 days
- Formulated for micro-sized parts
- Ultra High Accuracy
- ABS-like stiffness
Material Properties
The material is fairly durable and rigid with mechanical properties most similar to ABS plastic.
Its green colour allows for good part and feature visibility and its mechanical properties make it a more durable choice for small part applications than polycarbonate like materials.
Micro resolution
MicroFine Green is a best in class resin that has been custom formulated for ultra-high definition accuracy. Using specialised equipment only available at Protolabs, the new material allows parts to be printed to a layer thickness of just 0.025mm. Such precision provides an ultra-smooth finish and allows the printing of features as small as 0.07mm. This has not been achievable from SL technology until now.
The material is fairly durable and rigid with mechanical properties most similar to ABS plastic. Its green colour allows for good part and feature visibility and its mechanical properties make it a more durable choice for small part applications than polycarbonate like materials.
Small Parts Prototyping
Now you can reiterate your micro part design for form and fit testing to give you that extra confidence that it will be right. It not only ensures that you get it 100 percent spot on, but it reduces the development timeline. Before now if the product was not right you would need to wait several weeks while new tooling was manufactured. Take the headache out of designing micro resolution parts and check out how MicroFine Green will slash your development timeframe.
Precision Stereolithography
Our MicroFine Green parts are built with Protolabs’ unique equipment that has been modified and optimised for micro-resolution. Like all of our 3D printing processes, we run in-process controls to ensure parts are built accurately and we conduct strict quality inspections after the build to ensure accuracy.
The post build processing is nearly identical to SL parts built in other materials. It’s first cleaned with solvents and then fully cured in a UV oven. We then remove the support structures and sand it down for a smooth finish. For parts that are extremely small, we may forgo the grit blasting if there is a risk of damaging parts.
About Stereolithography
SL is an excellent choice for rapid prototyping and project designs that require the production of very accurate and finely detailed parts. It’s ideal for producing show-and-tell parts to enable validation of concept ideas and ergonomic testing. We also offer a number of secondary services such as painting to further enhance the finish of your 3D-printed project design.
With turnaround times in as fast as a day, we can now offer SL 3D printing in three resolutions standard, normal, high and micro. Exactly what you choose will depend on the feature size, maximum dimensions and other properties that you need.
Resources
Stereolithography Design Guidelines
Our Stereolithography design guidelines will help you understand the different capabilities and limitations and our design team is on hand to help you.
Other 3D Printing Technology
Stereolithography is just one of an expanding range of additive manufacturing processes available from Protolabs that include:
Selective Laser Sintering (SLS): Laser-sintered nylon powder, creating 3D printed parts that are stronger and more heat-resistant.
Metal Multi Jet Fusion (MJF): Uses inking agents across a bed of nylon powder, to give smaller features and improved surface finish compared to SLS.
Direct Metal Laser Sintering (DMLS): Laser-welds powder alloys, creating nearly 100% dense metal parts with wrought-type properties.
Polyjet (PJ): Jets and UV cures droplets of photopolymer, with the ability to change select color or hardness throughout your part. Also available in a 65A 3D printed silicone.
