Study on the Improvement of Surface Roughness of Complex Model Created by Three Dimensional Photofabrication (1st Report)

A new building process of three dimensional photofabrication is described which reduces surface roughness of parts. As CAD model is sliced into many thin layers in the three dimensional photofabrication process, smooth surface is converted into steps. Furthermore laser beam faithfully creates models not only their details but also steps. The influence of steps is dominant to the bad impression of the model's surface smoothness compared to its original design, if a gradient or an angle of inclination of surface is low. The proposed new process showed an improvement of surface roughness, especially on the gentler slope.