Which SLA resin should you choose for your part?

For most parts, standard resin is the right answer: it is the most economical resin on our SLA line, it holds the finest detail, and it sands, paints and plates beautifully. You step up from there only when the part’s job demands it: tough resin when the piece will be handled, clear resin when you need to see through it, castable resin for jewellery masters, high-temp resin for fixtures near heat. Resin choice is also a price decision, moving our SLA printing between S$0.30 and S$0.80 per gram, so picking the cheapest resin that does the job is real money on larger parts.

What is standard resin best at?

Display and detail. Standard resin prints at layer heights from 25 microns, so surfaces come off the machine smooth and edges stay sharp, which is why it carries our figurines, trophies, scale-model parts and masters for silicone moulding. The resin-printed anime figurine shows what that means in practice: we printed the figure, folding fan and bridge base as separate parts, each oriented for the cleanest possible surface, and delivered it in raw resin precisely because the unpainted print is crisp enough to show off. Its one weakness is brittleness: standard resin is the wrong choice for anything that flexes or takes impact.

When do you need tough resin?

When the part gets handled: fitted, assembled, carried around, passed between hands at a launch. Tough (or durable) resin keeps SLA’s smooth surface while standing up to that treatment. Be honest about the load, though. If the part needs snap-fits or a living hinge, no resin is the right answer; SLS nylon is built for exactly that, and our FDM vs SLA vs SLS guide walks through the trade.

How clear is clear resin, really?

Translucent off the printer, not window-clear, and closing that gap is finishing work: wet-sanding through progressively finer grits, polishing, then a UV-cure clear coat, typically 2 to 6 hours per part. Done properly, the result approaches glass. When a customer needed a transparent embossed dome for an adapter, we printed it in a specialised clear resin and kept it water-clear through a careful clean-and-cure routine, so the raised stud pattern reads crisply inside the dome. We have also printed a patient’s forearm and hand skeleton in industrial-grade resin, in both a tinted translucent and a clear version, for clinical use. Our transparent parts guide covers the full clarity ladder, including when laser-cut acrylic beats printing.

What are castable and high-temp resins for?

Two specialist jobs. Castable resin prints jewellery and lost-wax masters for investment casting, where the printed pattern is the start of a metal piece. High-temp resin suits fixtures and tooling that see heat. There are also flexible resins for parts that need some give. None of these should be a guess: tell us what the part has to survive and we match the resin, or try the material selector above for a quick steer.

Does the resin change painting and plating?

Less than you might think, because every resin shares SLA’s biggest gift: a dense, smooth surface. Resin parts typically need just one primer coat before colour, and they take electroplating better than most printed plastics, which is why our trophies and awards start life as SLA prints. If the plan is a painted finish or a chrome, gold or copper plate, standard resin is usually the base to pick.

When does SLA beat FDM for the part in hand?

When surface and detail matter more than cost or size. FDM is cheaper at roughly S$0.10 to S$0.30 per gram and better for large or purely functional pieces, but it shows layer lines. Pick SLA when the part will be looked at up close, painted, plated, moulded from, or has to be transparent. Every SLA part is washed and UV-cured to full strength, then checked before it leaves our workshop at 994 Bendemeer Road.

Upload an STL, STEP, OBJ or 3MF to the instant quote tool for same-day pricing across the resin range, or talk to us if you would rather describe the job and let us pick the resin.