Manufacturing Systems

Shoe manufacturing provides employment to a large number of European citizens. Large parts of the manufacturing process are still dominated by manual work. Robotic solutions to automate and optimize the production can ensure that European companies, in particular manufacturers of high-quality, high-price fashion shoes, retain their competitive edge on the global markets. There are many sectors of industry, in particular industrial production, that have a strong need for practical, flexible, and human-like manipulation and gripping. This is true in particular for SMEs characterized by fast changing product-cycles and the need for robots that can be integrated in manual product lines. In general, all industrial sectors with a high percentage of manual labour, a large number of product variants, and non-standardized or delicate products do need robots that exhibit a general flexibility and the capacity for human-like manipulation. Shoe manufacturing is an example for an industrial sector ...

Within the last few years there was a growing trend at universities to establish so called Virtual Reality laboratories as special work places. This trend follows the need for better visualisation, both of research findings and of teaching content. The use of Virtual Reality systems for educational purposes at universities improves the imparting of complex issues and therefore enables a faster and more purposeful expert education. The visualisation of the relevant teaching content, using the virtual-interactive environment in combination with practical training, will help to improve the training results [1]. This paper outlines the potentials of the Virtual Reality technology for the university education.

Quality and speed in manufacturing and assembly of micro systems significantly increased within the last years. Sophisticated micro- and nano-rapid prototyping methods in connection with replication techniques allow mass production of micro parts with very high precision. For quality control of those parts an as well fast as precise measuring method is necessary. The very good experiences of macroscopic fringe projection shall therefore be adapted and optimized to micro systems. Endoscopic fringe projection can achieve the measurement of small volumes optically, 3 dimensionally and precisely. The measuring principle and chances of this technique are explained exemplary on a fibrebased endoscopic fringe projection system, which currently is developed in cooperation with the SFB/TR 73 which is supported by the German research foundation (DFG).

As a result of economic and production-orientated advantages, laser sources have established in a wide range of manufacturing engineering in the last 30 years. In particular, due to the possibility of realising small focus diameters for material processing applications, the laser is one of the most important tools in micro technology. In this contribution, fundamental methods of laser micro processing are presented. In this context, well-established as well as nascent technologies are described. Concluding, a view on the market potential of laser-based manufacturing processes in micro technology is given.

Already today intelligent functions based on microsystems technologies can be found in many applications of everybody’s daily life. Mobile phones are called smart phones. They are equipped with digital cameras, music players, game consoles and PDA’s. Cars are getting more and more intelligent due to self controlled operation and adaptive safety systems. Japan, USA and Europe belong to the first research and de-velopment sites worldwide. Key factors for successful products will be system integration, miniaturisation and last but not least transdisciplinary technology approaches. Thereby the gap has to be bridged between the nanometer and micrometer scale of the components and the customer’s macro world. Smart Systems technologies and their integration will therefore have a significant impact on the competitiveness of entire sectors as aeronautics, automotives, security, logistics, medical technology and process engineering.

A huge variety of micro-sized sensors and actuators are created using methods of Micro Systems Technology (MST). The limitation of this technology is the use of stacked layers so that no real 3D-structures can be created. This barrier can be overcome by combining MST-processes with subsequent forming-processes to transform the flat structures into 3D objects. This is demonstrated with the forming of a planar coil arrangement into a cylindrical micro motor.

Micro rotary swaging is introduced as micro forming process for homogenous and compound parts. Application fields are seen within surgery, mechatronics, micro drives etc. The specific process limits are addressed. Demonstrator parts are shown to give an impression of the process capabilities. These are a combined laser melt/plunge swaged ball geometry and joined parts of different materials. The use of micro rotary swaging offers mostly the same advantages that are known from the macro world. Keywords:

Micro technological areas such as micro system or medical technology generate an increasing demand for micro parts. Besides high precision manufacturing processes for parts with a size of a few micrometers to millimetres, their production and assembly needs suitable handling technologies. This paper addresses these handling technologies and describes the principles and boundaries for gripping, conveyance, separation and sorting of micro objects.

Design and production of micro-mechanical assemblies is characterized by complex challenges. The small dimensions of the components are close to physical limits of micro manufacturing processes. Shape deviations cannot be avoided. They affect the interaction of single components and may even cause malfunction. At IPEK - Institute of Product Engineering Karlsruhe, a quality management strategy is developed that allows identifying the impact of shape deviations on the functional interaction of micro gears. Shape deviations can be detected and analyzed in order to find matching gears without the risk of malfunction.

More and more virtual tools are used for issues of product ergonomics and human factors in production. This article describes the use of digital human models as virtual tools used in CAx systems, PLM systems and in the digital factory. An empirical study with users of these systems shows the benefits working with these systems and the problems, which have to be solved in the future. The main question, answered by the article, is: Will virtual ergonomic tools be used by experts in the future or will these tools become a standard for constructing engineers and production planners?