Resin for photopolymer printing Formlabs Silicone 40A

Formlabs Silicone 40A Resin is the first 100% silicone resin available for photopolymer 3D printing. From now on, you don’t need time-consuming and costly molding and casting processes: Formlabs offers a new patented technology for photo-curing silicone. Use the advanced Formlabs Form 3+ ecosystem to 3D print 100% silicone parts in your own office in a matter of hours.

With this material with a Shore hardness of 40A, you will create soft, flexible, and strong parts with 250% elongation at break and 12 kN/m tensile strength that can withstand repeated cycles of tension, bending, and compression. They can combine the high performance of silicone and the design freedom of 3D printing to create highly functional silicone parts with excellent chemical and thermal resistance (-25°C to 125°C), thin parts as small as 0.3 mm, and complex geometries that are not possible with traditional methods. Thanks to Formlabs, cost-effective rapid prototyping and short-run production of silicone parts is now available to you.

Advantages of 3D printing from silicone

Silicone 40A Resin is a pure silicone with no added monomer or acrylate, created with Formlabs’ new patented Pure Silicone Technology™. Silicone 40A Resin combines the superior material properties of molded silicone with the benefits of 3D printing.

• Outstanding elastomeric characteristics

The material prints highly functional silicone parts that are soft, flexible and strong, with excellent chemical resistance and thermal stability.

• Cost-effective rapid prototyping and low-volume production

Eliminate costly tooling and time-consuming molding processes to enable custom and low-volume production of silicone parts.

• New design freedom

Create customized silicone parts with isotropic properties, thin features as small as 0.3 mm and complex geometries that are not possible with casting or molding.

• Fast and easy manufacturing

Take advantage of Formlabs’ optimized SLA ecosystem to produce clean silicone parts in your facility in a matter of hours.

Material properties

Below are the characteristics of a sample printed from Silicone 40A resin and polymerized at a temperature of 60 ºC for 30 minutes:

• Shore hardness – 40A
• Tensile strength – 5.5 MPa
• Elongation at break – 230%.
• Tensile strength – 12 kN/m
• Resistance to rebound – 34%
• Glass transition temperature (Tg) – -110 °C
• Ross Flexing Fatigue (-10 °C, serrated) – > 500,000 cycles
• Ross Flexing Fatigue (23 °C, serrated) – > 500,000 cycles
• Cytotoxicity – Pending (in the process of research and certification)