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184 MICROSTEREOLITHOGRAPHY FOR MEMS
UVbeam
(b)
Figure 7.13 Basic steps in the IH process used to make a metallic micropart. From Ikuta and
Hirowatari (1993)
• It has a medium range of accuracy (3 to 5 urn)
• It permits desktop microfabrication of parts
It should be pointed out here that the fabrication speed of the IH process is slower than
classic MSL because the scanning speed of the X-Y stage and container is less than that
of the galvanometric scanner.
7.3.3 Mass-IH Process
The slow fabrication speed of the IH process is a concern, and so the so-called mass-IH
process was proposed by Ikuta in 1996 to demonstrate the possibility of realising the
mass production of 3-D microfabrications by MSL (Ikuta et al. 1996).
The mass-IH process is schematically shown in Figure 7.16 and utilises fibre-optic
multibeam scanning. The basic idea is that an array of single-mode optical fibres can be
used to enhance the speed of device production.
