When searching for a suitable engineering 3D-printing resin, it might be difficult to select the right one for your applications. In the field of tough 3D-printing resins, there is a huge offering. We noticed that often the name ‘tough’ gets confused with ‘strong’ resins. For instance our Liqcreate Strong-X resin is listed in All3D.com’s ‘ABS-Like Resin & Tough Resin: The Best Brands of 2021’. In this article we will explain what the difference is and which properties are important for both tough and strong 3D-printing resins. An overview of strong 3D-printing resin and tough 3dprinting resin can be found in the links.
What are tough 3d-printing resins?
Standard, regular or general purpose 3D-printing resins tend to be brittle due to the rigid cross-linked nature of the polymers. Resin manufacturers are modifying the chemical backbone of the materials to get more toughness. Often this will increase the impact strength and elongation from a material, making it more resistant to breaking as the materials bend first before breaking. But this also has a negative effect on some other properties, like the tensile and flexural strength, temperature resistance and rigidity of the material.
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What is a strong 3d-printing resins?
Whilst a tough resin is modified on impact strength and often loses some tensile/flexural, this is the opposite for a strong 3D-printing resin. A strong resin, like Strong-X or Composite-X are resins with incredible flexural strength and often a good tensile strength as well. Often these resins are rigid and can handle static forces very well. For instance if you UV cure and bake the Composite-X resin, you will get a flexural strength up to 170 MPa, which is in the starting range of metals. But these resins often have a moderate impact strength, so we would not call them tough.
3D-printing parameters & settings for Tough and Strong resin
Before choosing the right material for your application, you should also check if the selected resin is compatible with your type of 3D-printer. Liqcreate resins are working on over 90 different printers. this ranges from LCD, DLP, MSLA and SLA printers with a light source of around 405 and 385 nm. A complete list of compatible printers and printing settings can be found in this link. When you click on our products, the technical and mechanical data is available on our website to decide if a resin is right for your application. If you need help finding the right resin or want to know more about resin compatibility with your 3D-printer, reach out to us at info@liqcreate.com and we will assist.
