100% Silicone 3D Printing Made Accessible: Introducing Silicone 40A Resin

Formlabs is proud to introduce Silicone 40A Resin, the first accessible pure silicone 3D printing material made possible by our patent-pending Pure Silicone Technology™, that combines the outstanding material properties of cast silicone with the benefits of 3D printing. 

While elastomeric 3D printing options are widely available, there are limited solutions on the market today that offer pure silicone 3D printing with advanced material properties due to high costs or technical challenges. Formlabs invented a patent-pending Pure Silicone Technology™  that relies on Formlabs’ stereolithography (SLA) ecosystem to produce 100% silicone parts in-house, in a matter of hours.

Silicone 40A Resin parts, with 40A Shore durometer, 230% elongation at break, and 12 kN/m tear strength, are ideal for applications requiring pliability and durability even through repeated stretching, flexing, or compression. Parts made with Silicone 40A Resin have a rebound resilience of 34%, excellent chemical and thermal resistance (-25°C to 125°C), and can have fine features as small as 0.3 mm and complex shapes that are challenging to achieve with traditional manufacturing methods.

Silicone 40A Resin parts are ideal for the following applications: 

• Rapid prototyping, beta testing, and validation stages of the product development cycle for elastic consumer goods, automotive components, and industrial equipment such as connectors, grommets, actuators, keypads, and watch bands.
• Cost-efficient low-volume or custom manufacturing of indoor end-use parts, such as seals and gaskets.
• High-quality, long-lasting custom manufacturing aids and tools such as flexible casting molds, jigs, fixtures, and masking tooling.
• Medical device components, patient-matched prosthetics, and audiology applications.
• Complex geometry parts that are difficult to manufacture with traditional methods.

Silicone parts, due to their pliable, durable, and compressive qualities, as well as chemical and temperature resistance, are used in a wide range of applications and industries, from seals and gaskets in automotive manufacturing to actuators and bellows in robotics, to consumer products like wearable, earphones, kitchen tools, and more. 

Mass manufacturing thousands of silicone parts is cost-effective and efficient through injection molding, compression molding, or extrusion processes. These workflows, however, require expensive tooling, machinery, and often the expertise of an external contractor who specializes in the design and fabrication of that tool.

For engineers, designers, and manufacturers who are looking to produce pure silicone parts in lower quantities (1-1000), the cost and time it takes to fabricate a tool is an obstacle. Lower-cost processes like silicone casting are possible for low volumes but are labor-intensive, time-consuming, difficult to replicate perfectly, and have design or geometry limitations. 3D printing with elastomeric materials is also a quick and cheap alternative, but the properties of these materials are often inferior to silicone. Though some 3D printer manufacturers offer pure silicone materials for direct 3D printing of silicone parts, these systems cost $100,000+.

Now, with Silicone 40A Resin, there’s no more trade-off between price, quality, and speed. Anyone with a Formlabs SLA 3D printer is empowered to directly 3D print pure, high-quality silicone parts fast, skipping the mess of casting, and avoiding the high costs of tooling.

Pure silicone 3D printing has been out of reach for many businesses that can’t afford expensive traditional silicone 3D printers. With Formlabs’ accessible platform, these businesses and individuals can now create end-use quality parts in a material that is familiar to manufacturers and consumers. This new workflow puts control back in the hands of manufacturers who were previously reliant on outsourcing for silicone parts and increases the productivity of prototyping teams at large companies.

Soft silicone cover to protect a clutch actuator cylinder in a vehicle from water, dirt, and debris. Because Silicone 40A Resin offers excellent chemical and thermal resistance, internal components like these can be used as an end use part for automotive applications.

3D printing with Silicone 40A Resin shortens the product development timeline by providing a method to quickly 3D print multiple iterations of soft and flexible components and functionally test them the same day, without the need to rely on an external contractor for tooling or labor-intensive silicone casting. For performance applications, such as consumer goods, automotive, aerospace, or robotics design, the ability to 3D print and functionally test parts like wearables, grippers, actuators, gaskets, and seals can help teams optimize their designs and move through beta testing and validation stages much more quickly. 

Testing products and components that behave exactly like the eventual injection molded silicone parts creates security and confidence in the development process. Avoiding any instances of redesign and obsolete tooling can save thousands of dollars, improve the credibility of a product, and help companies capitalize on market opportunities.

FINIS, Inc. is renowned for developing cutting-edge products that have gained the trust of swimmers across all skill levels due to their exceptional quality and performance. Based in California, USA, the company is dedicated to continuously advancing its innovative product offerings, keeping a keen focus on the changing requirements of swimmers and coaches.

In the past, they cast their silicone parts, which was labor-intensive and had long lead times. Now, equipped with the Form 3+ resin 3D printers and the new Silicone 40A Resin, they 3D printed swimming goggle gaskets similar to production quality within a mere eight hours and at a fraction of the cost, significantly undercutting the usual expenditure of over a thousand dollars and a three-week timeline associated with outsourcing. The 3D printed silicone gaskets underwent rigorous water tightness assessments within a swimming pool environment, helping the team shorten their product development schedule.

Dorman Products, a century-old manufacturer of aftermarket automotive parts for both light-duty and heavy-duty vehicles, has turned to 3D printing to speed up their production timelines and increase quality. They rely on their twelve 3D printers, split between two locations, to help them keep pace with the constant addition of new makes and models from the original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). 

The company has a vast in-house testing environment where they validate new designs. For pressure testing components, they need to be able to seal up certain ports and faces. But they don't always have the mating geometry to seal every part, so the team has to come up with creative ideas, which most of the time comes down to making custom gaskets and fixturing.

Traditionally, they’d measure components in their lab, get metal dies made, and then cut the custom gaskets using the dies in an arbor press. “It was like cutting cookies out of a sheet. It was very inefficient in terms of material use and time spent by our lab techs,” said Dorman’s Additive Manufacturing Lead, Chris Allebach. 

Switching to 3D printing allows the team to drastically reduce lead times and costs, especially considering the large number of new components. “We printed hundreds of custom gaskets for our throttle body tester to seal up both ends of the throttle body and then do flow tests on that,” said Allebach.