Quote:The reason that 3D printing with silicone hasn’t been viable until now, has to do with the materials properties that make it such a desirable material in the first place. This is because silicone cannot simply be heated up and printed into shapes the same way that thermoplastics or metals are. Traditionally, silicone parts could only be produced using an injection-molding processes, which is quite costly unless being used to manufacture large production runs of products. But the cost of developing molds makes the process far too expensive for general prototyping, customisation and product development needs. In order to make it possible to use silicone for those purposes, WACKER researchers needed to develop a completely different process.

The process that they ended up developing is similar to traditional 3D printing, but uses a glass printing bed, a special silicone material with a high rate of viscosity and UV light. A printing head similar to an inkjet printer lays a thin player of tiny droplets of silicone side by side on a glass printing bed, then the silicone is vulcanized using the UV light. The process is repeated until the desired object is complete, each new layer simultaneously being vulcanized to the layer beneath it. The final objects have virtually smooth surfaces and just like traditionally manufactured silicone parts, are completely biocompatible, heat resistant and transparent.