Additive Manufacturing (AM), as a fast growing and disruptive technology, offers many exciting opportunities for sustainability achievements as well as design innovation: just-in-time production, decentralized manufacturing, and the capability of  making complex shapes more efficiently. AM also presents potential hazards from the chemicals used. Some SLA resins, for instance, are aquatic toxicants, skin sensitizers and eye and skin irritants.

BCGC is currently partnering with Millipore Sigma, Northwest Green Chemistry, and researchers from Cradle2Cradle and the Technical University of Delft on a US EPA Pollution Prevention project “Developing and performance testing a safer formulation for stereolithography printing resin”. Executive Director Tom McKeag and researcher Nicole Panditi shared our preliminary results and project goals in the first-ever 3D Printing Conference at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire In August, 2019.

Our participation in the conference gave us a chance to learn of other groundbreaking research in additive manufacturing and to garner partners for our later resin testing . Mr. McKeag presented a talk entitled “Partnerships for Safer Chemicals in Additive Manufacturing.” Nicole Panditi presented a poster entitled “3D Printing as Source and Sink”.