SIEM measurements of ultimate tensile strength and tensile modulus of jetted, UVcured epoxy resin microsamples

• Published in: Rapid prototyping journal Vol. 10; no. 3; pp. 193 - 199
• Main Authors: Chang, Sheng, Attinger, Daniel, Chiang, FuPen, Zhao, Yong, Patel, Ranjana C.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Emerald Group Publishing Limited 01.07.2004
• Subjects: Measurement; Resins; Tensile strength
• ISSN: 1355-2546
• DOI: 10.1108/13552540410539012

Resin jetting with piezo printheads is in increasing use, and in the rapid prototyping industry, the merging quality between adjacent droplets will determine the mechanical properties and reliability of the products. Therefore, it is essential to find an experimental technique to ensure seamless interdroplet merging. Speckle interferometry with electron microscopy SIEM is a micromechanics measurement technique that has a spatial resolution approaching a few nanometers. In this paper, SIEM is successfully applied to measure the ultimate tensile stress and tensile modulus of jetted, UVcured cationic resin microsamples. Results show that the microsamples exhibit similar properties to the bulk material properties and that jetting two layers on top of each other is not detrimental to the material properties.