Study on Micromachine Tools in Fabrication of Microparts

The development of Mechanical Micromanufacturing Technology-micromachine tools, as an alternative method for the fabrication of miniature products, is illustrated in this paper. Its advantages over MEMS and conventional large-scale ultraprecision machine tools is the ability to produce micro parts, composed of various of nonsilicon materials, with real 3D complex shapes or free-form surface, and meanwhile consume little energy, space and resources. The focus is on the discussions of the processing tests and frameworks of the micro equipments developed in Japan, Korea, UK and USA. Especially, two micromachine tools (300 mm times 150 mm times 165 mm and 300 mm times 300 mm times 290 mm) developed in Harbin Institute of Technology are introduced. It also points out the trends towards the investigation on micromachine tools such as holding microcomponents, optimizing machining variables and monitoring micro tools.