Production Equipment and Processes for Bulk Formed Micro Components

Manufacturing techniques for production of small precise metallic parts has gained interest during recent years, an interest led by an industrial demand for components for integrated products like mobile phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), mp3-players and in the future for spare parts for the human body. Micro components have also found several applications within the medical, audiological and dental industry, applications that impose increased demands for biocompatible and corrosion-resistant materials and cleanness. So far these micro components have mainly been manufactured by traditional machining techniques or chemical etching. However, these traditional machining and etching techniques are generally not well suited for mass production of advanced micro components, due to handling problems, waste of expensive material and long machining times. This calls for development of a novel production system that can meet the demands for high productivity, high reliability, low cost, while being environmental acceptable. Bulk metal forming meets these demands to a great extent, but the technology cannot directly be transferred to the micro scale. A flexible machine system for bulk micro forming has been developed and used to form a number of industrial micro parts in aluminium and silver, with ongoing work on forming of titanium. Manufacture of billets by cropping has been examined using a simple test rig and an automatic cropping device has been designed, manufactured and tested.