Stereolithography, the most common Rapid Prototyping (RP) technique, utilises a liquid photopolymer which is selectively hardened via an ultraviolet laser. A lithography-based RP process, currently under development in the Computer Integrated Manufacturing Laboratory (CIMLab), is able to create functional composite plastic parts reinforced with glass fibres for improved mechanical properties.

In this thesis, novel fibre-resin mixing and layer formation subsystems, for the rapid layered manufacturing of fibre-reinforced composite parts were developed. These new subsystems addressed drawbacks of the original system including part profile-dependent process variation, impeded delivery of the required volume fraction to small solid areas, long cycle times and reduced performance of the fibre-resin mixing with the depletion of liquid level. The design were developed through the use of formal guidelines provided by the Axiomatic Design methodology.

The proposed fibre-resin mixing subsystem includes a constant-volume-mixing chamber fed by an external hopper. An experimental prototype of this subsystem was built to verify the proposed mixing process experimentally in terms of its ability to (1) deliver fluid with the desired fibre content to the rest of the system throughout the build and (2) preserve the average length of the fibres.

The layer-formation subsystem incorporates a slot coater with an array of continuously metered fluid inlets. Flow from the inlets is extruded into a wide film to cover the build platform. The layer-formation concept was analysed through numerical simulation, in conjunction with factorial experimental design, with the aid of a commercial CFD software package. Experiments were performed with a physical prototype of the coater in order to demonstrate its ability to (1) create parts of uniform fibre content regardless of the parts geometry or position within the vat and (2) create layers with the desired uniformity and geometric quality.