Micro Insert Moulding for the Production of 8 Pin RIC Socket for Hearing Aid Applications

This report presents the development of an 8 Pin RIC (Receiver in the canal) Socket for hearing instruments within the framework of the European project COTECH. There were 8 industrial demonstrators developed in COTECH based on the converged product and process design. Sonion’s 8 Pin RIC Socket was one of them. 8 Pin RIC Socket is a functionally versatile product which can combine many different functions in one single unit and presents many advantages compared with the previous 3 Pin RIC Socket. For the demonstrator production of the new Socket, two different production concepts were chosen- one based on semi-automated process and the other one is fully automated process. Current report presents the entire process chain for both the concepts and makes a comparative analysis based on the experimental investigation and validation. The work presented here can be a source of valuable information for industrial users and researchers working with micro production of metal-plastic hybrid components.