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Abstract
The production of miniature parts is gaining importance due to the trend of miniaturization which is increasingly determining the development
of products ranging from mobile phones and computers to medical products. The application of conventional manufacturing processes for the
production of such microparts is possible, but there are problems that result from the small dimensions. This fact applies also in the eld of metal
forming, however, in the meantime many research projects in several countries could improve this situation. This paper gives a review of the problems
associated with miniaturization, the way of solution starting from basic research, and the results showing the progress of microforming today.
# 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Micro-metal forming; Material behaviour; Processes
1. Introduction
To start with, a denition: the term microforming, in the
context of metal forming, is understood to be the production
of parts or structures with at least two dimensions in the submillimetre range [1]. Parts of such a size are commonly used
and more and more required in extremely high numbers, in
particular for electronic components in micro-system technologies (MST) and micro-electromechanical systems
(MEMS) as they characterize today many products pushing
forward their miniaturization. Typical examples for such
parts are pins for IC-carriers, fasteners, micro-screws, lead
frames, sockets, and any kind of connecting element (Fig. 1).
Secondly, its history: in 1990 as awareness of the technology grew, the industry produced such partsactually by
turning and millingthe question arose as to why this could
not be done by metal forming. For the metal forming society
this is quite a justied question since forming is the predestined method of manufacturing near net shape parts
especially when high production numbers and high production rates are required. However, at this time it became
obvious, that there was no basic knowledge on microforming
and practically no application visible, not even in the prototype stage. But there were some visions. One was given by
Maeda [2] who proposed the development of a super microprecision press-machine. This was one of the occasions to
start basic research on microforming at the authors' institute.
*
Corresponding author.
E-mail address: u.engel@lft.uni-erlangen.de (U. Engel).
The rst and rapidly yielding nding was that the know-how
of metal forming cannot be easily scaled down to the microscale revealing simultaneously many other reasons why this
technology is not applied to this day. It is well-recognized
that it is not only the peculiarity of the process itself which
has to be understood, but there are also many problems
related to the tool and machine tool for which new solutions
must be found. Meanwhile, a lot of research activities have
been initiated worldwide covering this eld of problems and
showing that microforming is on a promising way towards
its application in industrial production. It is not the intention
of this paper to present the state of the art of microforming.
This was given recently elsewhere [1]. The intention is to
show by means of examples the necessity of basic research
to realize this special application of metal forming.
2. Microforming system
A microforming system can be split uplike conventional forming processesinto four groups as shown in
Fig. 2.
Beside the challenges that are also known in the eld of
conventional forming, like tool design, wear and appropriate
treatment of the material, problems appear in microforming
that are strongly coupled with miniaturization itself. These
problems are observed in all four groups:
The material behaviour changes with miniaturization,
caused by size effects that occur when a process is scaled
down from conventional size to the micro-scale. The ow
0924-0136/02/$ see front matter # 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
PII: S 0 9 2 4 - 0 1 3 6 ( 0 2 ) 0 0 4 1 5 - 6
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Fig. 1. Microparts: lead frame, pitch 0.3 mm (top) and extruded parts
(Shinko, NME).
The comparison of microforming processes with conventional ones shows that some parameters remain constant
when scaling down the dimensions. The microstructure of
the material, for instance, is independent of the dimensions
of the process. Another example is the topography of the
surface, which is also invariant. As a result, the ratio between
the dimensions of a part and parameters of the microstructure or surface changes with miniaturization. This leads to
the so-called size effects, which prevent the application of
the know-how of conventional forming processes in the eld
of microforming. Therefore, investigations were necessary
in order to quantify these size effects. The strategy was to
scale down forming processes systematically [4,5].
At rst, studies with basic experiments have been realized. The investigated processes were simple with the aim
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38
tests. The former is based on the fact that the evolution of the
inner diameter of a ring during compression depends quite
sensitively on friction. The investigations have shown that
friction increases with miniaturization in the case of lubrication with oil, while it is size-independent in the case of no
lubrication [6,11,14].
The advantages of the DCE test compared with the ring
compression test are a larger increase in the surface area,
larger strains and higher pressure between specimen and die.
This means, the conditions are more similar to typical
extrusion processes [15,16]. For the investigation of the
inuence of miniaturization on friction, scaled DCE tests
have been carried out. The diameters of the specimen were
varied between 4 mm down to 0.5 mm. Fig. 5 outlines the
Fig. 5. DCE test: (a) dependence of cup height on friction; (b)(d) FEM
calculation, development of the cups.
Fig. 6. Increase of friction indicated by the cup height ratio of a DCE test
depending on punch travel.
39
reason for this effect is that the random size and orientation
of the geometrical features characterizing the microstructure
(e.g. grain size) and topography (e.g. lateral extent of closed/
open lubricant pockets) become dominant when the specimen dimension is reduced.
3.3. Case studiestowards process realization
40
Fig. 11. Backward can extruded part, thickness of the wall 8 mm, SEM
picture (left) and cross-sectional micrograph (LFT).
41
Fig. 13. Bending forces and yield strength in bending tests. Effect of
miniaturization and grain size (LFT, mate).
42
Fig. 17. Warm forging: flow stress and scatter decreasing with temperature
(LFT).
43
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