Process for the Production of a Three-Dimensional Object With Resolution Improvement by "Pixel Shift"
First Claim
1. A device for producing a three-dimensional object from a solidifiable material, comprising:
- an image forming unit comprising a number of image forming elements arranged in a two-dimensional matrix, wherein during an object building operation,each image forming element projects a first solidification energy onto a surface of the solidifiable material, thereby projecting a first set of pixels on the surface of the solidifiable material, the first set of pixels defining an image pattern at a first position and each pixel in the first set of pixels corresponding to one of the image forming elements, andeach image forming element projects a second solidification energy onto the surface of the solidifiable material, thereby projecting a second set of pixels on the surface of the solidifiable material, the second set of pixels defining the image pattern at a second position shifted relative to the first position, and each pixel in the second set of pixels corresponding to one of the image forming elements.
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Abstract
The invention relates to a process or device for the production of a three-dimensional object by layer-wise solidification of a material which is solidifiable under the application of electromagnetic irradiation by means of mask illumination, wherein the mask is produced using an image forming unit having a prescribed resolution, which is formed from a constant number of image forming elements (pixels) being discrete and being arranged in a spatially mutually fixed manner. For the improvement of the resolution along the outer and inner contours of the sectional areas of the object to be generated layer-wise in the sub-pixel range, a multiple illumination per layer is performed, which consists of a series of multiple images that are mutually shifted in the sub-pixel range in the image/construction plane, wherein a separate mask/bitmap is produced for each shifted image.
137 Citations
20 Claims
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1. A device for producing a three-dimensional object from a solidifiable material, comprising:
an image forming unit comprising a number of image forming elements arranged in a two-dimensional matrix, wherein during an object building operation, each image forming element projects a first solidification energy onto a surface of the solidifiable material, thereby projecting a first set of pixels on the surface of the solidifiable material, the first set of pixels defining an image pattern at a first position and each pixel in the first set of pixels corresponding to one of the image forming elements, and each image forming element projects a second solidification energy onto the surface of the solidifiable material, thereby projecting a second set of pixels on the surface of the solidifiable material, the second set of pixels defining the image pattern at a second position shifted relative to the first position, and each pixel in the second set of pixels corresponding to one of the image forming elements. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15)
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13. The device of 1, further comprising a transparent plate imaging optic having mutual plane-parallel surfaces, wherein the plate is configured to tilt to create the shift between the image defined by the first set of pixels and the image defined by the second set of pixels.
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16. A process for making a three-dimensional object from a solidifiable material, comprising:
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projecting a first set of pixels of solidification energy onto a surface of the solidifiable material, wherein the first set of pixels defines an image pattern; projecting a second set of pixels of solidification energy onto the surface of the solidifiable material, wherein the second set of pixels defines a shift of the image pattern. - View Dependent Claims (17, 18, 19, 20)
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Specification