In micro-manufacture, manual assembly often becomes unfeasible due to the small size of the products. As a result, microassembly is becoming a sector of strategic importance in parts of the world with high labour costs due to the specific needs of automated fabrication and assembly processes. This in turn makes outsourcing a less attractive option. It is well recognised that the production of miniaturised products will require radical rethinking and restructuring of the underlying technologies and system engineering approaches in high-precision assembly as well as developing new commercial concepts and infrastructure for delivering new technologies.
The critical enabling technologies currently being developed include high-precision positioning devices; precision tracking and control of applied forces; process monitoring and feedback; miniaturised 'super-clean' environments; automated microassembly and nanoassembly, testing and packaging techniques. There is also a need to develop new approaches for microassembly system design, which will allow the deployment of reconfigurable systems for volume manufacture of products in close proximity to the customer.
Microassembly has developed rapidly over the last few years and all the predictions are that it will remain a critical technology for high-value products in a number of key sectors such as medical and pharmaceutical, communications, military and aerospace. The key challenge is to match the significant technological developments with a new generation of micro-products that will firmly establish microassembly as a core manufacturing process.
Dr Svetan Ratchev
Precision Manufacturing Group, University of Nottingham