Carbon Fiber Resin Jetting (4)

Resin Curing Test

While I wait for the printer's body to be cut, I ran some more experiments with UV curable resin with carbon fiber powders to see a possibility of using UV light source. I used two different resins, which are mixed with 1,6- Hexanediol Diacrylate as a resin and Phenylbis phosphine oxide as an initiator. I used 2% of initiator. I added 0.2% of Sudan for one resin to measure the differences. I used a UV flashlight to cure the tested resin that emits 395nm UV.

Carbon fiber powder after cured with resin without Sudan I.

Carbon fiber powder after cured with resin added with Sudan I.

For both tests, the same PX35 carbon fiber powder is used. I manually shoot UV light using UV flash light around 10 seconds.

Results: Resin without Sudan I was better absorbed by the powder and cured better with the powder. The viscosity is low enough to be used in the hacked 2D printer head.

Our team will finish assembling body parts this week. We will continue resin curing test. I will focus on the printer mechanical parts, so I can start resin test with the printer itself.