A study of the impact of short-term ageing on the mechanical properties of a stereolithography resin

Rapid prototyping (RP) processes are a well-established area within the product development cycle. RP technologies are increasingly being used as rapid manufacturing (RM) systems mainly for producing customised end-use parts. At the same time, the properties of materials being used in RP processes have improved so they can be adopted for this purpose. One of these materials is the epoxy resin Accura SI40 developed for stereolithography. In this paper, the impact of short-term ageing on some of the mechanical properties of this resin have been investigated. Also, through this investigation, it was shown that in a short-term ageing cycle (namely, 24 days), the amount of curing in the resin and the variations in its mechanical properties would reach equilibrium as ageing proceeds. Furthermore, by adopting thermal analysis techniques namely differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), these results have been quantitatively validated. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.