Hi, silicone-like materials are already quite common with standard DLP or SLA-type printers that cure a photopolymer using UV light. These materials are not actual silicone but silicone-like, and by silicone like the suppliers of these materials are usually only referring to the hardness of the material, they will not have the thermal resistance and biocompatibility of typical 2-component platinum cure silicone. I have used these materials and they are definitely interesting because of the complex parts that can be printed using UV cure printers, but I would not use them as a silicone replacement.

Hey there! As Benjamin pointed out, there are indeed silicone-like materials available for 3D printing. You might want to consider SIL 30, provided through the Carbon DLS process. This is a tear-resistant silicone urethane elastomer with biocompatibility that’s suitable for skin-contact applications. While the cost of DLS is slightly higher than other methods for single items, it can scale quite effectively depending on the size of the part, and the materials are certainly suitable for final use applications. We also provide silicone casting, which uses SLA printed master patterns and soft tooling, making it perfect for producing low volumes (for instance, 25-100 pieces) of production-quality parts to test the market before investing in high-volume production options such as LSR molding.

There are other methods of printing silicone other than the photopolymer route, these printing technologies are less well known as they are usually used for niche applications. One example is Spectroplast. Their machine prints a proprietary, 100% silicone with properties approaching that of platinum-cured silicone. I did notice that their datasheets do not provide test results for cytotoxicity (toxicity to cells) so maybe make sure before using it for your armbands.