Manufacturing Systems

Industrial companies as well as small and medium sized enterprises engage themselves more and more in international production networks. Each networkpartner aims on building and maintaining business relationships to the best partner for any specific task. This leads to an increasing amount of goods being transported from partner to partner and leads to an immense logistics effort. These logistics tasks are responsible for major cost blocks in most companies. Organisations will have to react to the increasing demand for on time delivery with organisational as well as technological solutions to maintain their competitive advantage.

The assembly of fragile microsystem or semiconductor components poses a challenge on handling technologies as damage by gripping forces must be avoided. Non-contact handling solutions are being developed at the Institute for Machine Tools and Industrial Management that facilitate a gentle gripping of sensitive dies and highly thinned wafers using fluid dynamic effects. The advantages of this technology are reduced damages during handling, a higher yield per wafer as well as a reduction of particle contamination.

Analysis systems for petrochemistry and gas analysis, process control and surveillance of environment as well as in biotechnology and medicine systems are promising fields of application for micro and nano technologies. Such micro analysis systems combine low cost of investment, installation and use with precise and fast measurements at low consumption of probe and energy. For a successful introduction of such systems, however, these technologies have to be incorporated throughout the complete system, otherwise the advantages of high integration density, low cost of fabrication at high functionality will not be obtained. Various such micro analysis systems are presented e.g. a gas chromatograph, a mass spectrometer and an infrared measurement system.

The structure, the most important results and the perspectives for future work of the Collaborative Research Center 499 „Development Production and Quality Assurance of Molded Microcomponents made of Metallic and Ceramic Materials” are briefly described. Numerous literature with a more detailed description of the scientific work and its results are given.

Microstructured devices and their potential for novel, more efficient chemical processes have received a great attention among experts over the past years. By using these devices with structural details in the submillimeter range inside, chemists and engineers expect a number of advantages compared to conventional production of chemicals: higher safety, lower environmental risk and pollution as well as better use of raw materials. Beyond these sustainability issues, microstructured devices will contribute to a better economic efficiency. A step towards better chemical processes was done recently: A high-performance microreactor developed at Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe was successfully used in a chemical production process at DSM Fine Chemicals GmbH.

Since more than one decade, building electronic or optical devices on a nanometer scale has been pushed for a variety of applications. Complementary to the build-up of devices on a micro- and nanometer scale by use of suited process technologies (top-down) is the use of nano-scale materials (bottom-up). With both approaches, a higher integration density combined with less spatial extension and a higher level of optical and electrical functionality can be realized reducing simultaneously the costs . Beside of the realization of miniaturized components, the use of low-cost process technologies also reduces manufacturing costs. For the realization of miniaturized components as well as for the use of low-cost process technologies, there is a demand for new materials which can be adapted to the processes and technologies in a wide range and/or which have functionalities decreasing the necessary processing steps. The material class of nano-scaled inorganic-organic hybrid polymers ...

Complex production systems in micro production, concerning the manufacturing of miniaturised systems, assemblies and components, are very special. For example Hesselbach [1] stated, that micro production technology (sometimes to be found as (ultra) precision engineering) spans basically all, partly highly specialised production techniques. Kiesewetter [2] points out, that micro production is not just a kind of “shrinked machine building or mechanical engineering”. Mostly the whole manufacturing process chain or at least larger, interrelated section or subsystems and -processes, for example mainly for the manufacturing of miniaturised mechanical modules or assemblies respectively, are basically not examined. The paper discusses and presents topics concerning the planning and operations of micro production manufacturing process chains, against the background of the manufacturing of miniaturised mechanical modules and components.

For micro assembly processes, assembly accuracy in the range of one micron is required. In the following some strategies for enhancement of accuracy in micro assembly are shown by means of two different assembly systems. First, a self-developed assembly system consisting out of a parallel robot for micro assembly, a 3D vision sensor, grippers, magazines and fixtures is presented. Second, a cartesian robot that endues over a 2D vision sensor, a force sensor and a confocal laser scanning microscope is described. On the basis of examples for micro assembly processes the application limitations of both systems are depicted.

The continuous attempt to miniaturize components and structures demands increasing improvements in the field of micromachining technologies. A big challenge for the production technology is to manufacture microsystems and micro parts made of different materials. Processes well suited for three-dimensional machining of many materials are mechanical production technologies. A practicable production technology that is able to structure hard and brittle materials with high surface qualities is micro-grinding. The following article should give an overview about the current state of the technology of micro grinding of hardened steels.

Fast ions produced in so-called broad beam ion sources are established as highly deterministic tools in ultra-precision surface finishing processing. The driving force for this kind of technology is the requirement for highest quality surfaces with ultimate roughness and accuracy in topology. High performance optics which need such surfaces with fabrication tolerances below one nanometer are used for lithography, laser, x-ray or optical satellite communication as well as highly integrated electronics for processors and memory circuits and surface acoustic wave filters. New physical effects of ion beam induced smoothing of surface and nanostructure give rise for new research and development with a high potential of technology exploitation. Scientists and technicians from the Leibniz Institute for Surface Modification do intensive research work in this field and develop ion beam technologies and components mature for application in industry.