This latest development, however, was the first time a commercially-available material had been available in which the hologram was a Lippman (volume hologram) created in
photopolymer. Lippman holograms offer high 3D effects in the vertical and horizontal directions as well as depth, and the reproduced images give impressions of real-life solidity.
Photopolymer continuous print sleeves were - and in many ways still are--known as preferable to their primary competitor, elastomer sleeves.
"Innovative start-up companies may face challenges in making the best use UV+EB," said Mike Idacavage, Colorado
Photopolymer Solutions and Board member of RadTech.
According to the MIT team, the MultiFab 3D printer works by mixing together microscopic droplets of
photopolymers that are then extruded through inkjet print heads similar to those in office printers.
Because the refractive index of each component differs, the hologram is recorded as the refractive index distribution in the
photopolymer medium.
Therefore, taking advantage of previous research )(19), (16-23), in this study we codoped Zn[(MA).sub.2] and nitroaniline into the PMMA/PQ
photopolymer to enhance its holographic storage capacity and recording characteristics, as measured in terms of diffraction efficiency and dynamic range (M#).
Thomas Pang invented the first epoxy-based
photopolymer that improved the SLA accuracy by an order of magnitude.
Agfa's newest
photopolymer plate, the N92v, is a long-run, high-consistency, no-bake plate designed to improve run length and print quality, according to the company.
Stratasys also offers VeroBlue, an acrylic
photopolymer modeling resin manufactured by Objet Geometries for the Eden333 PolyJet system.
From there, the file is then "printed" three dimensionally using either
photopolymer, thermopolymer, polystyrene, or other materials, depending on the method.
Supporting the rapid production of the multiple prototype iterations was RenShape[R] SL 7560
photopolymer supplied by the RenShape Solutions Tooling Group of Huntsman Advanced Materials (East Lansing, MI).
The Eden333 uses the company's PolyJet technology to precisely jet an environmentally stable
photopolymer in layers down to 16 microns, which results in smooth surfaces, fine details and fast build times.