Micro Nano Molding Seminar, Book release & Reception

In the last few years, Ortofon has greatly expanded its know-how and technological understanding of micro injection molding, in particular with respect to the frontiers of dimensions and tolerances achievable in plastic micro component production. This presentation will focus on the latest micro moulding developments, the integration of micro injection technology into micro mechanical assembly, and the achievement of micro tolerances on plastic parts with mass in the milligram range.

Micro and nano injection moulding is one of the hottest technologies since its numerous applications apply in different fields. This talk analyses the evolution from two perspectives: patents and design. The first part analyses how and where the machines are developed and process investigated giving the audience a general feeling on how the research and the applications are evolving worldwide. The second part investigates how micro injection moulding machines are designed, what are the principles and what were their evolution from macro to micro. The analysis is based both on a theoretical functional analysis and on the performance of different injection moulding machines.
This talk starts with the machine main part features description associated with process phases and functions. Subsequently part features are analyzed to understand the causal chains bringing either to the desired behavior or to the failure to be avoided. Finally, design solutions are compared by gathering quantitative data from experiments.

Accurate process monitoring is a key requirement for any industrial process and provides information that can be used to identify issues and control the process within acceptable limits to guarantee output quality.
The micro injection moulding process poses key measurement challenges for the implementation of such systems and the work presented here shows how these challenges can be overcome through a combination of prudent technology selection and design. A number of different sensor technologies and applications will be presented, along with strategies for Industry 4.0 compliant systems.

Innovation in nanotechnology proposes applications integrating micro and nanometer structures fabricated as master geometries for final replication on polymer substrates. This presentation highlights developed methods and approaches to process chain validation for final polymer micro and nano structures replication. Fidelity between the different process chain steps and their dependency to process variation, process conditions, tool accuracy, material behavior and features geometries are presented.

The implementation of replication techniques relies on the availability of tooling technologies for manufacturing tools and molds. Micro machining technologies have been developed over the past 20 years to a level that matches, to a large extent, the requirements for manufacturing micro injection molding molds as well as molds with micro features. Such technological processes have primarily arisen from the miniaturization of precision engineering technologies mainly based on material removal.
The presentation deals with available micro manufacturing technologies for mold making. It presents alternative approaches to tool manufacturing and discusses capabilities and limitations with some examples.

In this contribution, the variety of machining processes from diamond turning w/ or w/o Fast Tool Servos, ultra-precision milling and diamond milling, shaping processes like Diamond Micro Chiseling for structured optical surfaces as well as abrasive machining like precision grinding, micro grinding and polishing techniques will be introduced. The application of these machining technologies to the fabrication of optical molds is elucidated by selected examples like such as a Fresnel lenses, a micro beam splitter and retroreflectors.

Mass manufacture requires robust replication technologies to meet these demands and microinjection moulding is a key technology for achieving micro-parts in large-scale production. The high performance micro moulds used in the moulding process are critical for delivering high quality parts for the duration of the product life cycle. Tool coatings are commonly used to improve the life of large scale moulds, and recently Diamond-like carbon (DLC) coatings have been shown to enhance the performance of micro moulds. This talk will discuss novel surface treatments used in micro injection moulding to improve the factors that affect parts’ quality and to increase part functionality. Christian will discuss various surface treatments and their influence regarding the behaviour of the µ-IM process and identify novel surface treatments for texturing micro mould tools.

Vacuum-assisted micro injection molding has been established as a common practice for the manufacturing of micro- and nano-structured surfaces, where the adoption of conventional passive evacuation setups (i.e., machined slots) is not possible. The vacuum venting application is introduced in the conventional process as an auxiliary technology that allows improvement of the replication degree by reducing the counteracting pressure generated by the air entrapped in micro features. Evacuation of air from the cavity has been reportedly observed to provide significant advantages for the quality of the molded micro parts, the integrity of the tool and the controllability of the process. However, disadvantages could be increased cycle time and costs. The effects on part quality resulting from the application of vacuum venting is evident. The effect on the replication degree of micro features is however more complex. During its optimization other variables such as the selection of different process parameters and of the molding polymer should be considered.

Recent research carried out at DTU Mechanical Engineering has shown that today it is possible to use simulation of micro injection mouding to analyze and improve micro part design, micro tool design and process design. Advances in micro moulding optimization and application to micro structured components (weight > 100 mg) and micro 3D components (weight <10 mg) for applications in the medical industry will be presented during this talk.

Nowadays, moulding technologies are still leading in the mass production of new advanced micro and nano systems, involving large varieties of materials, different dimensional scales, increasingly small dimensions and dramatic growing of the complexity of the surfaces, which incorporate more and more functionalities in one single micro- or nano-structured part. In this perspective, metrology must provide adequate instruments and techniques for quality assurance and concurrently the possibility to efficiently cope with industry requirements.
This presentation covers comprehensive techniques for the evaluation of micro injection moulding productions introduced through several actual cases from recent research. Several working principles of instruments to be used for measuring micro injection moulded components are also presented, including scanning probe microscopes, coordinate measuring systems and computed tomography scanners.

The direct fabrication of miniaturized polymer components by Additive Manufacturing (AM) processes is a remarkable method at the micro dimensional scale. Injection molding inserts manufactured additively by vat photopolymerization has become a serious option for significantly faster and more economical prototyping and pilot production due to technological progress and advancements in photopolymer materials in recent years.
This talk discusses the latest development related to additive manufacturing used for tolling manufacture in micro injection moulding. In particular dimensional variation of moulded features geometries and corresponding structures on the printed tool are presented. Dimensional accuracy in investigated linking toll wear with the increasing micro injection moulding process cycles.

Miniaturization of technical components represents an eminent trend of our time and many Micro System Technology (MST) products made of polymers or silicon have successfully entered the market. On the other hand many applications demand for higher specific properties, i.e. the metal and ceramic materials and adequate manufacturing processes. Due to this constellation, the development of the so-called MicroPIM process for the fabrication of metal and ceramic micro components was an obvious concern. The smallest details in the micrometre range have been achieved using different kinds of metal (steel, iron alloys, copper, tungsten etc.) and ceramic powders. The powder particle size has been identified as one of the most influential factors concerning surface quality and accuracy. The powder-binder segregation is mainly caused by the occurring shear rates and can be regarded as the main reason for failures such as voids and distortion. Up to a certain extent, however, simulation of flow filling might help to avoid such defects. By way of further progress in micro-manufacturing, two-component and in-mold-labeling MicroPIM has been developed. Both variants allow for the fabrication of multi-material and thus multi-functional products with the additional benefit of reduced assembly costs.

The continuous trend towards miniaturization and multi-functional products calls for more and more multimaterial components for the future micro systems. The multimaterial and functionally integrated products are becoming in most cases an economic and technological key factor for the advanced micro systems. One of the most industrially feasible ways to produce multicomponent micro parts is the multimaterial micro moulding. By merging of shaping and assembly processes into a single step in multimaterial (also known as multicomponent) moulding, a significant economic progress can be made in micro manufacturing.
This presentation will focus on the different aspects of multimaterial micro injection moulding. Special emphasis will be given to the two component micro injection moulding as this is the basic process of multicomponent micro injection moulding. The focuses will be on the parameters that influence the quality of polymer-polymer bonding interface. The presentation will introduce the analyses and relations between the bonding and the interface quality with special focus on micro scale applications. The results and discussion presented will provide a guideline for the multicomponent micro moulding for a wide range of industrial applications.