Manufacturing strategies for scalable high-precision 3D printing of structures from the micro to the macro range

Abstract

Abstract Industrial high-precision 3D Printing (HP3DP) via two-photon absorption (TPA) provides freedom in design for the fabrication of novel products that are not feasible with conventional techniques. Up to now, 2PP-fabrication has only been used for structures on the micrometer scale due to limited traveling ranges of the translation stages and the field-of-view (FoV) of microscope objectives (diameters below 0.5 mm). For industrial applications, not only high throughput but also scalability in size is essential. For this purpose, this contribution gives insights into different manufacturing strategies composed of varying exposure modes, fabrication modes, and structuring modes, which enable the generation of large-scale optical elements without relying on stitching. With strategies like stage-only mode or synchronized movement of galvoscanners and translation stages, optical elements with several millimeters in diameter and freeform shape can be fabricated with optical surface quality.