Ultra-Fine Piercing by Ceramic Fiber Punch

传感器、过滤器、发动机喷嘴、喷墨打印机等都需要微孔。随着对微小孔尺寸的要求越来越高，对微小孔的钻孔、激光穿孔、电火花加工、穿孔等加工方法的研究也越来越多。就生产率和成本而言，穿孔在大规模生产中是可取的和广泛使用的，包括冲裁用于IC铅焰等电子部件的约100μm厚的金属。然而，由于冲头和模具的制造和对中困难，传统方法不能期望进一步的小型化。虽然微穿孔工具可以通过电火花磨削来精确制造，但这仍然是一个费力和昂贵的过程。另一方面，其中一位作者提出了一种相当简单经济的方法，用陶瓷纤维作为冲头，通过铝、铍铜和不锈钢箔的实验，证实了获得了真正的圆孔和锋利的孔。然而，人们也发现，这种方法的刀具寿命太短，无法投入实际应用。本研究对这一问题产生的原因进行了分析，并提出了两点对策。经过连续的穿孔试验，改进后的系统对各种金属箔都是有效的。

Micro holes are necessary for sensors, filters, injection nozzle of engine, ink jet printer and so on. As the requirement of hole size becomes smaller, researches for micro hole processed by drilling, laser perforation, electro-discharge machining (EDM) and piercing have been increased. With regards to productivity and cost, piercing is preferable and widely used in mass production which includes blanking of about 100 μm thick metals for electric parts such as IC lead flame. However, further miniaturization is not expected by conventional methods because of difficulty in making punch and die and centering of them. Although micro piercing tools could be made precisely by wire electro-discharge grinding, this is still a laborious and costly process. On the other hand, one of the authors had proposed a rather simple and economic method by using ceramic fiber as a punch and confirmed that truly round and sharp-edged holes were obtained through the experiment with aluminum, beryllium copper and stainless steel foils. However, it was also found that tool life was too short to put this method into practical use. In this research, reasons for this problem were investigated and two counterplans were proposed. As the result of continuous piercing tests, improved system was effective for various metal foils.