Development of Plane Irradiation Type Micro Stereolithography Equipment using Optical Fibers

Abstract

The conventional stereolithography method has a weak point which is necessary to long time to fabricate because of exposing resin along the each point of the structure. New type micro stereolithography equipment, which is plane irradiation type micro stereolithography with optical fibers, has been developed in order to overcome this problem. The developed system consists of ultraviolet light source, shutters and five optical fibers in a line arrangement as a variable shape mask. The variable shape mask is enable to copy desired shape on the resin. This paper describes the design of the mask using simulation analysis of light power distribution from optical fiber and confirmation of availability of this equipment from curing experiments of resin. As a result of the curing experiment, the time required to fabricate a shape of star structure in the proposed method is two times as fast as the conventional method.