Academics
  /  
Courses
  /  
Course Descriptions
MECH_ENG 445: Micromanufacturing


VIEW ALL COURSE TIMES AND SESSIONS

Prerequisites

ME 340-1 (Introduction to Manufacturing Processes) or permission of instructor.

Description

Overview

The explosion of micro-scale product development in consumer markets including healthcare, communications, defense, energy and electronics, to name a few, has the potential to significantly improve quality of life and personal well-being. In response to this trend, this course focuses on the key issues associated with product miniaturization and micro-engineering.

Micromanufacturing for the purposes of this course is defined as the creation of high precision 3-dimensional products using a wide variety of engineering materials with feature sizes in the range of tens of micrometers to a few millimeters with extremely tight tolerances. Emphasis will be placed on micro-scale product design and material-related issues and on new top-down and bottom-up manufacturing processes in addition to the accompanying trend toward the miniaturization of manufacturing equipment and systems.

This trend is, with increasing frequency, referred to as the “Desktop” or “Micro-factory” paradigm. The fundamental scientific and pragmatic technological topics associated with miniaturization will be discussed.

Topics

  • Introduction to Micro-manufacturing
  • Scaling Laws
  • Micro-Machining
  • Forming and Molding
  • Micro-EDM
  • ECM
  • Laser processing
  • Micro-Joining and Assembly Additive Processes
  • Micro-Metrology
  • Miniaturized machines and robots
  • Design for Micro-Manufacturing
  • Micro-factories

Evaluation Method

Mini-projects (45%); Term Paper + Video Presentation (50%); Class Participation (5%)