Stereolithography System Using Multiple Spot Exposure

A new method of making 3-D objects is proposed. A discharge lamp is used as a UV light source, and to make the fabrication time shorter, multiple spots exposure using optical fibers is employed. The light is distributed to some optical fibers. The output side of each fiber is arrayed linearly and the emitted lights are focused on the surface of the photosensitive resin. As the fiber array is raster-scanned, the light transmission of each fiber is controlled by the optical shutter independently according to the pixel data at the corresponding position to be irradiated. Small-sized stereo-lithography systems can be realized economically by this method.