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. 2020 May 20;11(5):518.
doi: 10.3390/mi11050518.

The Fabrication of Micro Beam from Photopolymer by Digital Light Processing 3D Printing Technology

Ishak Ertugrul  1
Affiliations

The Fabrication of Micro Beam from Photopolymer by Digital Light Processing 3D Printing Technology

Ishak Ertugrul. Micromachines (Basel). .

Abstract

3D printing has lately received considerable critical attention for the fast fabrication of 3D structures to be utilized in various industrial applications. This study aimed to fabricate a micro beam with digital light processing (DLP) based 3D printing technology. Compound technology and essential coefficients of the 3D printing operation were applied. To observe the success of the DLP method, it was compared with another fabrication method, called projection micro-stereolithography (PμSL). Evaluation experiments showed that the 3D printer could print materials with smaller than 86.7 µm dimension properties. The micro beam that moves in one direction (y-axis) was designed using the determined criteria. Though the same design was used for the DLP and PμSL methods, the supporting structures were not manufactured with PμSL. The micro beam was fabricated by removing the supports from the original design in PμSL. Though 3 μm diameter supports could be produced with the DLP, it was not possible to fabricate them with PμSL. Besides, DLP was found to be better than PμSL for the fabrication of complex, non-symmetric support structures. The presented results in this study demonstrate the efficiency of 3D printing technology and the simplicity of manufacturing a micro beam using the DLP method with speed and high sensitivity.

Keywords: 3D printing; digital light processing; fabrication; micro beam; projection micro-stereolithography.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Dimensions of the micro beam.
Figure 2
Figure 2
(a) Schematic of a digital light processing (DLP) system [53]; (b) 3D printing process in progress; (c) MiiCraft 3D printer.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Schematic of the projection micro-stereolithography (PμSL) method [62].
Figure 4
Figure 4
CAD design of the micro beam. The structures at the top of the design were designed as support.
Figure 5
Figure 5
The step-by-step diagram of the 3D printing operation.
Figure 6
Figure 6
Image of the micro beam fabricated with the DLP method.
Figure 7
Figure 7
CAD design of the micro beam. The support structures under the micro beam are removed.
Figure 8
Figure 8
Image of the micro beam fabricated with the PμSL method.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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