Architecture combination by micro photoforming process

“Photoforming” and “photofabrication” are the names for a plastic forming method using photochemical solidification of liquid resins. One of this method is well known as the stereolithography in the field of rapid prototyping and manufacturing (RP/M). We have suggested an application of photoforming to micromachine fabrication, and showed some guidelines to get finer forming precision with detail theories and experiments on MEMS ´93 (1993). In this study, we proposed new concepts of “combined architecture” and “glue mechanism” The first word means a way to fabricate complicated structures by combining components, each of them is made by its best fabrication process and they are connected each other by joint mechanisms. This joint mechanism is named “glue mechanism”, the second word. Fabrication using combined architecture will be very effective to make micromachines with given functional requirements, but there is no micromachining process to make such a complex glue mechanism, except photoforming. Also we did some experiments to make a structure using combined architecture to verify if photoforming really has the potential to realize the architecture combination, We combined surface machining and photoforming to cancel their weak-points each other, and to give good actuation characteristics and-the best shape for their functions as a tool of utility