Experimental investigation on high-resolution stereolithography system

To accurately fabricate microstructures with the high-resolution Stereolithography (SL) system newly developed by Xi'an Jiaotong University, experimental studies were carried out to investigate the influences of the build parameters on the cured line width and depth in the novel SL system. Cured line with a width of 0.012 mm and a depth of 0.028 mm was fabricated in the experiment to show the capability to build microstructures of the new SL system. The experimental results indicate that cured depth and width increase with the increasing ratio of laser power to scanning speed. And it is found that the cured line built with the high-resolution SL system is smaller in width and deeper in depth compared with the cured line fabricated with the current SL system under the same scanning condition. Based on the cured line width and depth obtained in the experiment, empirical laws predicting cured line width and depth according to the ratio of laser power to scanning speed in the SL system are established with a least-square fitting. The cured line width and depth predicted by the empirical laws provide a foundation to set up accurate line width compensation and appropriate layer thickness in the high-resolution SL system.