Robert E. West

The Rapid Photonic Innovation Device, or RaPID, was a senior design project that I worked on with a team of three other students. The goal of the project was to create a device that allowed for prototyping photolithographic structures quickly and inexpensively. Other options (UV and electron beam systems, for instance) were prohibitively time-consuming, expensive, difficult to use, and difficult for a student to gain access to. In an effort to make the prototyping device widely available, we decided on using Blu-ray drives. The laser inside a Blu-dray drive has a wavelength of only 405 nm, making it well-suited for our purposes.

Our project had three parts. First, we needed to create a fabrication device (RaPID Drive) from a standard Blu-ray drive. Second, we needed to interface with the device via a custom software (RaPID View). Finally, we needed a special disc onto which we could fabricate (RaPID Media). The final poster that we presented at the senior design expo is shown below.