Digital maskless lithography capabilities for surface texturing with biomachining

This paper presents the development of a digital maskless lithography process and its capabilities for micro-feature fabrication using biomachining as a metal removal process. The maskless lithography system was developed using a DLP projector and is used to fabricate arrays of micro-sized geometric features. Square shapes were produced in dimple and pillar modes, and the smallest widths were 60 and 50 μm, respectively. For line features, the smallest width of 35 μm was produced with a maximum gap of 60 μm. Micro-features with a high density of 140 dimples per square millimeter were also produced. Geometric dimple shapes were biomachined on iron, and tribology analysis was performed. The coefficients of friction were compared for workpieces with and without surface textures and for different dimple shapes.