Microstereolithography: a Review
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Microstereolithography: a Review Arnaud Bertsch, Sébastien Jiguet, Paul Bernhard1, Philippe Renaud Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne (EPFL), STI – IMM – LMIS4 1015 Lausanne, Switzerland 1 Proform AG, Route de Chésalles 60, ZI les Fontanettes 1723 Marly, Switzerland ABSTRACT Microstereolithography is a technology at the interface of the microengineering and rapid prototyping domains. It has evolved from the stereolithography technique, and is also based on a light-induced layer-stacking manufacturing. As the resolution of the microstereolithography technique is far better than the one of rapid prototyping technologies, this technique is of particular interest in the microengineering domain where its 3D capability allows the production of components no other microfabrication technique can create. The first developments of the microstereolithography technique have started in 1993 and different research teams have developed machines since, using different approaches. This paper reviews the major microstereolithography processes developed until now. Microstereolithography is starting to be a commercially available manufacturing process. As the market for miniaturized products grows rapidly, there is an increasing need for highresolution small size prototype parts. If the production of small mechanical components is the first commercial application of microstereolithography, this technology can also produce useful components for the microrobotic, microfluidic, microsystems and biomedical fields. Current research in the microstereolithography field is focused on using ceramic composites as material to manufacture complex three-dimensional parts that can be sintered to produce pure alumina microcomponents.
INTRODUCTION Microstereolithography is the general designation of various microfabrication technologies based on the principle used in stereolithography, a rapid prototyping technology patented in 1984[1,2] and used in the automotive and aerospace industries as well as in all industrial and technological fields requiring the manufacturing of three dimensional prototype parts. If the word “Microstereolithography” is now commonly accepted by almost every user and developer of this technology, many different names (micro-photoforming, IH process, spatial forming, 3D optical modeling, microstereophotolithography, optical forming, etc...) have been used by the research teams who published the first reports on this technique, corresponding to variations in the design of the built apparatuses. Nevertheless, whatever their name can be, all microstereolithography machines have the same aim and the same basic principle: They allow to build small-size, high-resolution three-dimensional objects, by superimposing a certain number of layers obtained by a light-induced and space-resolved polymerization of a liquid resin into a solid polymer.
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IMPROVEMENT OF THE STEREOLITHOGRAPHY RESOLUTION To understand how stereolithography, a rapid prototyping technology with a 150µm resolution, could evolve towards m
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