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7.1 INTRODUCTION
Nowadays the plastics micromaufacturing is the technology with major potential of development for the next years in the field of plastics manufactured applications with weight lower than a gram and with tolerances of the order of between 10 and 100 microns, making possible complicated geometries and a high superficial quality.
7.1.1 Definition
According to the "Institute of Design and Production in Precision Engineering (IKFF)", microinjection includes three different areas:
- Microinjection of pieces: Pieces of very low weight, of the order of the milligrams, dimensions of only a few millimetres and details of the range of micrometers.
- Microstructural pieces: Pieces with standard dimensions, with several grams weight, but that possess areas with microstructural details.
- Microprecision pieces: Pieces of any size, but with tolerances of the order of micrometer.
7.1.2 Aplication area
It doesn’t exist any specific market of “micro” pieces, but they are used in numerous and diverse areas, particularly in the electronic, medical and pharmaceutical industry, as well as in the automotive, watchmaking and technical toys industries.
Some of the pieces have gears shape, auditory devices, molded interconnected devices, bobbins, throttles, sensors, lenses, bearings, components of optical fibre, etc. These minuscule pieces have zones of critical dimensions, such as hollows of the size of a pin, bolts, channels and hooking systems.
Figure 7.2. Hearing aid micro implant
7.1.3 Advantages
The micromanufactured pieces present many advantages respecting to the conventional ones. First, they make possible a notable saving of resources, both in raw material and energy, and in the space required in the shop floor, since the equipments are notably more compact and small. Thanks to this, it is obtained a cut of the piece final price. Second, microproduction makes possible to produce more pieces simultaneously.
