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The research in mini, micro and desktop factories originates from early 90's and has continued since then by developing the technological basis and different technological building bricks and applications in the field of high-precision manufacture and assembly of future miniaturized and micro products. This has paved the way to mini, micro and desktop factories which are seen as one potential solution for that kind of production by improving space, energy and material resource utilization and answering to the needs of design for postponement and customer-close customization and personalization. The research efforts done during these years are now increasingly leading also to commercialization and real industrial applications. The objective of this paper is to present an overview of the international microfactory research and to introduce in more detail the modular microfactory concept developed in the M4-project.

Abstract:This paper presents a test environment enabling the study of factors affecting on the success of a robotic precision assembly work cycle. The developed testing environment measures forces and torques occurring during the assembly, and uses a system based on machine vision to measure the repeatability of work picce positioning. The testing environment is capable of producing exactly known artificial positioning errors in four degrees-offreedom to simulate errors in work-piece positioning accuracy. The testing environment also measures the total duration of the robot work cycle as well as the durations of all essential phases of the work cycle. The testing environment is best suited for light assembly operations and has measurement ranges of *36 N and *0.5 Nm and the vision system has a field-of-view of 6 mm.The latter part of this paper presents the results of the research done in order to find out how some selected factors affect the assembly forces of robotic assembly. These factors include work piece and process parameters such as work piece material and design (chamferedistraight), positioning tolerances, and robot insertion motion speed.

If you would like to write for this, or any other Emerald publication, then please use our Emerald for Authors service information about how to choose which publication to write for and submission guidelines are available for all. Please visit www.emeraldinsight.com/authors for more information. About Emerald www.emeraldinsight.comEmerald is a global publisher linking research and practice to the benefit of society. The company manages a portfolio of more than 290 journals and over 2,350 books and book series volumes, as well as providing an extensive range of online products and additional customer resources and services.Emerald is both COUNTER 4 and TRANSFER compliant. The organization is a partner of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and also works with Portico and the LOCKSS initiative for digital archive preservation. AbstractThis paper discusses a novel assembly method and system for a commercially available 8 mm diameter miniature planetary gearhead. Our system comprises a commercially available four-degree of freedom industrial robot, two vision systems, a force feedback system in the robot wrist, and specially designed flexible part feeders. The system has proved successful in assembling planetary gear units independently. Depending on the task, one can select whether to use the high accuracy and repeatability of the robot or alternatively use programmable frequency vibration in the gripper to stochastically align the parts that the robot handles.

Currently, adhesive films are replacing glue in many applications in semiconductor packaging and microelectronic assembly. When adhesive films are used to mount components on a PCB, the success of the automatic joining operation depends on many different things. Manufacturers of adhesives use three main values when they are discussing processing parameters in their data sheets. The paper describes in detail the concept of the developed assembly environment for making test joints of miniature and MEMS components using adhesive films.