Direct machining of microstructures in polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) with single-edge micro end mills with diameter 20 μm

摘要

The potential of microfluidics has constantly grown over the time. Microfluidic devices are important toolboxes offering a wide range of biological and chemical applications, such as diagnostics, genetic screening and chemistry production. Due to the increase of product variety and reduction in time-to-market, the fast manufacturing of micro structures at a prototype level is desired. This becomes possible through direct micro milling, providing a highly flexible manufacturing process with a high material removal rate. One challenge in this process is the design of micro end mills limiting the reachable structure size and possible free-form surfaces. In this paper, micro structures are directly milled in polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) with in-house developed micro ball end mills of 20 μm diameter.