Design of precision desktop machine tools for meso-machining

The paper describes the classification of non-lithography based meso-manufacturing. Desktop machine
tools and standard machine tools are the current manufacturing equipment for such machining scale, however desktop machines are the most economic and should achieve better accuracies. Various inherent problems and challenges in the development of highly precise desktop machine tools are discussed in this paper. A design strategy is proposed in the end for the development of a miniaturized machine tool with the aim of a very high precision.
This presentation is made by my PhD student Azfar Khalid.

The University of Manchester, email: s.mekid@manchester.ac.uk

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Submitted by Mekid on Mon, 26/06/2006 - 1:13pm.
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better accuracy

Submitted by Sameh on Fri, 07/07/2006 - 10:17am.

Very promising research,
my question is :

What are the reasons that the accuracies achieved by standard size machines are better than the small size machines and how you will overcome these reasons?

Thank you

Sameh Otri

Thank you for your

Submitted by Mekid on Fri, 07/07/2006 - 11:37am.

Thank you for your comment.

There are many reasons why we beleive that a micro-machine should in fact acheive better accuracy than standard machines. Among these reasons are less inertia because of small mass involved and lower thermal effects. However, some physical phenomena have to be taken into account at small scale with a number of design principles. Most of these are discussed in our previous paper:

S.Mekid , A.Gordon, P.Nicholson, Challenges and Rationale in the Design of a Miniaturised Machine Tool, International MATADOR, Conference 2004 UMIST.

Dr S.Mekid

sticky fingers

Submitted by mark on Tue, 11/07/2006 - 1:41pm.

As you say, at these smaller scales, different physical phenomena are important. If I understand correctly, friction is more important than weight for example.

For the scales and materials that you are using how much of a difficulty is electrostatic adhesion, either for the workpiece or the swarf? Is there any problem with accidental magnetisation? If there is a problem with these forces, have you also considered how they could in fact be usefully employed in the handling process?

influence of surface forces

Submitted by azfar on Tue, 11/07/2006 - 4:12pm.

Yes, the influence of surface forces is greater than the inertia forces at micro scale.

Out of all the surface forces, electrostatic force is the most influential at micro scale. (See the above mentioned paper for details)

One of the aim of this research project is to model this physical phenomena by using different materials that are common in machining process. Once this physical phenomena will be modelled and verified, it can be employed in fact, in any micro process to get better accuracies.

Manufacturers' interest for micro-factories

Submitted by Brousseau on Tue, 11/07/2006 - 7:07pm.

In the paper, you mention meso-manufacturing as well as micro-manufacturing. Is there an accepted definition to differentiate both terms?

I am also wondering if you know whether there is a lot of interest from machine tool manufacturers to embrace the concept of micro-machines or micro-factory. At first glance, it seems so as your paper reports that KERN and NANOWAVE have made a step in that direction. Could you please comment a bit more about that?

Emmanuel

Micro and meso machining

Submitted by azfar on Wed, 12/07/2006 - 4:07pm.

The 4 terms i.e., Macro, micro, meso and nano can be classified according to the artefact dimensions. Macro indicates the artefacts of sizes that start from 1 mm to bigger sizes. Micro artefacts lie in the size range of 1 micro m to 1 mm. Whereas meso artefacts lie in the size range of 1 micro m to 10 nm.

In answering to the other question, not many companies have stepped into building micro machines yet. Rather many companies have made standard size machines for the purpose of micro manufacturing. Although micro factory concept is first concieved and practically developed in Japan by AIST, but the KERN and NANOWAVE have made the first commercial micro machine projects.

Design of precision desktop machine tools for meso-machining

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