Parts manufactured by PμSLA have intrinsic surface roughness on the sidewalls, which is a result of two main factors, the staircase effect and diffraction of the projected light. Each micromirror in the digital light projector acts like a micro aperture. Therefore, the projected light has a Gaussian intensity profile that is reflected in the cured geometry. Proposed here is a physics-based analytical model as a function of the exposure time and the layer thickness to predict the surface roughness of the manufactured parts. The predicted results are then assessed experimentally with parts manufactured with a combination of different process parameters values. The different lay directions of surface roughness produced by this process are identified. The effect of the process parameters on surface profile in the different lay directions is investigated experimentally.
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