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

Problems

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.

The microassembly operations are the same as in standard assembly (handling, gripping, feeding, fixing/joining, selecting, orienting, control, etc..), but for components with at least one dimension less than one millimetre physical phenomena as superficial adhesive forces, Van der Waals attraction and electrostatic force, not relevant in standard assembly, play a key role.

In the microscale, for example, the gravity force becomes negligible, for the low mass of the microparts, compared to the adhesion/superficial forces with evident problems in detaching and releasing the handled microcomponents.  

Whereas the low weight of microparts represents a problem, on the contrary it can be the opportunity for adopting new handling principles suitable for microassembly. For example several research works deal with the problem of non-contact handling: sonotrodes have been proposed and tested to handle fragile components, laser pressure has been used to manipulate living cells, electrostatic field to move miniature polymeric parts, dielectrophoresis to separate, trap and classify bacteria and cells, etc... So an interesting research activity is that of analysing and testing the possibility of transferring a physical or chemical principle into the assembly filed.

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

Last Update 2004/06/01