MICROASSEMBLY

Scientific Coordinator: Prof. Marco Santochi

Overview

• Introduction
• Problems
• Research
  • Contactless Electrostatic Handling of mini and microparts
    • Electrostatic Alignment
    • Electrostatic Feeder
    • 3 DoF micromanipulator
  • Micropositioners
  • Measurement
  • Microrobot
• Links
• Contacts

Introduction

Mini and microassembly are fundamental issues in the mass-production of products that contain mini and microparts (sub millimeter screws, shafts, pins). Whereas in the macroscale many devices (grippers, robots, feeders) have been used to automate nearly all assembly operations, on the contrary in the microscale the effort to develop similar systems is at an early stage.

Moreover, the large number of different fields of application, environment and conditions need, for example, different materials and joining technologies, therefore flexible tools, devices and assembly techniques.

Therefore it has been considered useful to design and test a device that, like a feeder in the macro-world, locates and orients randomly positioned microparts before they are fed to an assembly station. Actually, alignment and precise positioning of disordered components can improve automation and reduce the assembly time.

[ Introduction ] [ Problems ] [ Research ] [ Links ]

Last Update 2004/05/27