Abstract: In stereolithography, support structural design will greatly affect the building accuracy of the prototype. The warping mechanism is studied through the analysis on the building pro-cess of part’s non-horizontal undersurface. Then with FEM calculation model of the mechanics behaviors between adjacent layers during the prototype building process, the FEM calcula-tion simulation and experimental verification on the relation-ship between overhang length and warpage are performed, hence some design rules about the structure, layout and inter-vals of the support are suggested aiming at improving the building accuracy of the prototype. Through experiment, it is proved that these design rules can effectively ensure the building quality of the SL prototypes.

Key words: Rapid prototyping, Stereolithography, Support design