Desktop Manufacturing System for Micromachines using Concentrated Miniature Machine Tools

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The research introduces a desk-top manufacturing system for micro-machines. It has a miniature machine to cut micro parts ; it needs low environmental load and low working energy. We designed it under the following design strategy. (a) The miniature machines are concentrated around a fixed workpiece ; the machines are transferred to the next process. (b) The designed mechanism in the miniature machines is not a similar and miniaturized mechanism of macro and conventional ones. We realized a "micro machine shop" which sizes a 200 mm cube, and which mills five faces of the workpiece of a 1 mm cube. According to the strategy, the shop concentrates 4 machines, 1 manipulator and 1 microscope around the workpiece, and employs an air turbine besides a rotation motor, a voice coil motor held by an elastically deformed plates besides a ball screw held by a linear ball guide. We evaluated it through micro-milling of metals or plastics. (1) Both cooling of a column and a table using adiabatic expansion of the air and position feedback control with strain gauges on the elastically deformed plates progress the table movement to a 0.05 mum resolution and a 1 mum repeatability. (2) Rigidity of the table under position controlling is not rigid to 10 mN/mum just after force working, but later becomes a infinity to mill precisely. (3) Square-bar-shaped endmills made of carbides or diamond can micro-mill the workpiece as well as micro-mill. But the home-made or market-available endmills are not thin to 50 mum in diameter, and not sharp to 0.1 mum in edge radius ; we can not cut a groove such as 30 mum wide. The system is a promising micro-factory for an one-item production such as cutting an electrode or a package during surgery operation, or cutting the mold of a contact-lens or an accessory in a shop.