Micro powder injection molding—large scale production technology for micro-sized components

Abstract

Micro powder injection molding (μPIM), a miniaturized variant of powder injectionmolding, has advantages of shape complexity, applicability to many materials and good mechanical properties. Co-injection molding has been realized between metals and ceramics on micro components, which become the first breakthrough within the PIM field. Combined with the prominent characteristics of high features/ cost ratio, micro powder injection molding becomes a potential technique for large scale production of intricate and three-dimensional micro components or microstructured components in microsystems technology (MST) field. micro injection molding, co-injection molding, large scale production, microsystems technologyThe rapid development of microsystems technology (MST) has created a great demand for the production of 3-D micro-sized components, such as micro sensors, microparts and micro reactors, to meet the requirements of both high quality and low cost. Many conventional production techniques, however, are incapable of fabricating such small parts. And the current microsystem production technologies, such as micro cutting, laser ablation, silicon etching, LIGA and so on, are not competitive for their high cost, low efficiency or limited materials applied. Micro powder injection molding (μPIM), a technology which applies the powder injection molding to the production of parts with micro size, emerges as an alternative to fabricate the micro components in large scale with metals, alloys and ceramics.

Fatigue properties of conventionally manufactured and micro‐powder‐injection‐moulded 17‐4PH micro‐components

“…Because conventional testing techniques cannot be easily applied on this size scale, the introduction of μ PIM‐based products is partially restricted by the lack of suitable small‐scale testing options …”

Measurable properties of Al2O3 ceramic injection molding raw materials

“…Th e principle of the measurement is the following: the intensity-distribution of monochromatic parallel light beam is measured in the function of the scattering angle, when it has been transmitted through the sample. From this value, using diff erent models and theories, the grain size distribution of the particles can be counted in the sample [7,10]. …”

“…In this way, the density and the grade of polydispersity of the powder can be determined [6,7,10]. Th e principle of the tap density measurement is the following: the given weight of alumina powder is put into a scaled cylinder that is laid on a resonator unit.…”

Micro metal injection molding (MicroMIM)

“…Often, there are hardly any other ways to process and apply these materials economically, other than by MicroPIM (Rota et al, 2004). A comprehensive survey exploring market volume trends of MicroPIM can be found in Yin et al, 2008;.…”