Microstereolithography and application of numerical simulation on its layer preparation

Today, product miniaturization is an emerging technology trend in industry, which demands smaller parts and components for new products. Microstereolithography is one of the promising microfabrication techniques that meet this demand, which originated from rapid prototyping. It is capable of building complex 3D microstructures with high-aspect ratio and high resolution in both lateral and depth directions. The paper gives an overview of current different microstereolithography methods firstly. Then, it focuses on the recoating process that is responsible for fresh layer preparation. This process causes limitations in term of resolution in depth direction and takes up the majority of build time. Aiming at solving these problems, this paper proposes a numerical method to investigate resin settlement, which adopts computational fluid dynamics (CFD) to simulate the recoating process. It hopes the method can find some ways to improve the accuracy of layer thickness and accelerate build time. © Professional Engineering Publishing 2004.