In SLA printing, an ultraviolet laser traces the cross-section of a part onto the surface of a vat containing an ultraviolet curable photopolymer resin. The resin exposed to the light will cure and solidify, sticking to the layer below it before the platform descends by a set distance and more liquid resin is added to the vat. This process will repeat for each subsequent cross-sectional layer until the three-dimensional part has been created. The following image illustrates this process:
SLA printing
The source of this image can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Stereolithography_apparatus.jpg#filelinks.
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SLA printing began the additive manufacturing revolution and remained the main 3D printing process until mid-1980 when Dr. Carl Deckand and Dr. Joseph Beaman, with sponsorship from DARPA, developed and patented Selective Laser Sintering (SLS).