Rapid Manufacturing of 3D Micro-products using UV Laser Ablation and Phase-change Filling

UV laser micromachining is generally used to create microstructures for micro-products through a sequence of lithography-based photo-patterning steps. However, the micromachining process is not suitable for rapid realization of complex 3D micro-products because it depends on worker experience. In addition, the cost and time required to make many masks are excessive. In this paper, a more effective and rapid micro-manufacturing process, which was developed based on laser micro machining, is proposed for fabricating micro-products directly using UV laser ablation and phase-change filling. The filling process is useful for holding the micro-products during the ablation step. The proposed rapid micro-manufacturing process was demonstrated experimentally by fabricating 3D micro-products from functional UV-sensitive polymers using 3D CAD data.