Second day of the Micronarc Alpine Meeting just finished and there was again some very high-level presentation on how to actually manufacture parts. One of the technology presented was lithography electroplating molding. This technology is now perfectly mastered. Let’s see an example with Mimotec.
Small and precise The technology is quite simple, we use a UV source of light and attack a photo-sensitive material through a master that lets the light pass only where we want. Then we have a mold that can be filled by electroplating. The technology is well suited to produce micro parts like we can find in watch industry and medical for instance.
Benefits
- There is no attachment like in molding, then it doesn’t require polishing to remove the small peaks
- Precision +/- 1 micron
- Not limited to one level parts, today the company produces three level parts
- Possibility to insert jewels directly in the plating operation
- Wide number of possibilities
Several functions in one If the technology is taken early in the conception process, we can benefit from whole new capacities and combine functions on one part. For instance, in watch industry we discovered a part that replaced 3 parts (3 functions) plus another one as aesthetics. The freedom of design is total. And even more interesting, the tooling doesn’t wear! That means every produced part is exactly the same as the previous one.
I will come back on that technology later. Meanwhile you can discover it here: http://www.mimotec.ch/
