Study on nonlaminate micro stereolithography using LCD mask (2nd report) - Thin layer laminating fabrication using LCD live-motion Mask

This paper presents a new micro stereolithography technique to fabricate a micro 3D structure rapidly and precisely by using LCD live-motion mask. Exposure through the live-motion mask fabricates each thin layer precisely without scanning. The extremely thin layers are continuously solidified by providing liquid resin synchronized with the mask changes. As a result, a 3D object is fabricated by continuous laminations of these thin layers. In order to verify the feasibility, we developed LCD micro stereolithography system based on 3D-CAD and performed some experiments. The lateral and depth resolutions reached 3 μm and 1μm, respectively. It took only about 7 minutes to fabricate a pyramidal shape consisting of 100 layers. A micro two-step gear with shaft was fabricated precisely and rapidly without assembling. The module of this two-step gear is only 20μm. The number of the tooth is 100 for the large gear and 25 for small one. These results show that our proposed method has possibility of precise micro fabrication in practical use.