Arnaud De Grave

Sustainability of Micro-Manufacturing Technologies

This chapter discusses the sustainability of micro-manufacturing technologies. The common view in the field of the environmental impact of micro-products is that small-size products involve the use of less material, require less production energy and produce less waste material, and hence are more environmentally friendly. This view is not fully valid and there are many benefits in applying tools for sustainability in micro-product development. Micro-components are often assumed to be more environmentally friendly than their macro-counterparts, although this may be challenged, and in some cases even contradicted. The manufacturing of micro-components is very demanding. Indeed, it often requires a special working environment not only for the handling and assembly of the parts, but also for their production. The maintenance of this working environment (white- or clean-rooms with controlled atmosphere and pressure for instance) is very expensive, both in economic terms and in respect of environmental impact.

GRADUATE AND PH.D. COURSE ON DESIGN AND MANUFACTURE OF MICRO MECHANICAL SYSTEMS

Micro mechanical components play an increasing role in micro systems with product dimensions ranging from micrometers to millimetres. The use of metals, polymers and ceramics for miniature components requires product development methods as well as specific manufacturing technologies. Indeed it is now well known that micro/nanotechnology is not only a matter of downscaling applications and methods from the macro scale, and therefore an in-depth understanding and knowledge of product and process characteristics at this scale is necessary. Based on this challenge, a new course was developed at the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the Technical University of Denmark. This paper describes the framework of the course that has been applied both at graduate and Ph.D. level. The current structure of the course as well as the pedagogical approach and some examples of final projects will be presented. Moreover, the transformation of the traditional semester structure (13 weeks and 3 weeks project) into a 2 weeks PhD summer school is discussed.

Functional analysis for micro mechanical systems

Functional analysis is a powerful tool to describe and represent both macro and micro devices. Functional analysis is used in the paper as a tool for investigating the miniaturisation issues and for highlighting the critical parts or features that mainly are affected by downscaling. A systematic method, based mainly on functional analysis, and a series of additional tools are illustrated by analysing the design of a new micro fluidic system starting from the corresponding macro product. The functional analysis seems to be a good tool as well for novice designers as for expert designers facing up with design issues at different scales. The micro world introduces micro-specificities that have to be considered as additional constraints to design.