Square Foot Manufacturing -A progress report

摘要

Even today a wide spectrum of common products contains numerous microstructures, either as independent components, or as parts of larger work pieces. The number of applications for these structures with a typical edge length between several microns and a few millimetres is expected to increase in the future [1]. Either scaled machine tools from the conventional mechanical engineering branch or machine tools based on desktop manufacturing concepts can be used for the manufacturing of these structures made of common metallic materials via machining processes. Concerning dimensions and installed capacity these machine tools are approximated to the needs of the desired microstructures, still the functional principles and configurations of conventional machine tools are used. The Institute of Production Engineering at the Helmut-Schmidt-University, University of Federal Armed Forces Hamburg is developing the Square Foot Manufacturing concept, as a trendsetting desktop manufacturing concept [2] to take full advantage of the ecological, economic and technical innovation potentials [3] in the field of micro manufacturing. This paper presents an outline of recent developments.