The Process Study Of Fabricating Micro Gear Cavity Based On Quasi-LIGA And Mold Design

Due to the increasing demand for micro products along with the development of micro electromechnical system technology, fabricating micro products by traditional micro-machining technology can hardly meet the requirement of microsystem. Nevertheless, fabricating micro parts employing micro-molding technology has becoming an important development trend for its high efficiency, steady quality and so on.Based on the introduction of process characteristic of micro parts and micro molds, the machining characters of some kinds of micro-machining methods and their applications in micromold manufacture are discussed in general, and gives emphasis to indicate the applications and development of LIGA and quasi-LIGA technology as a typical lithography, as the theory of experiment parts in this subject.In the experiment, using UV-LIGA technology including SU-8 lithography and nickel micro-electroforming, micro gear cavity core is fabricated. The mold core is made by 45# steel substrate, making up of mold cavity with nickel layer. The paper analyses and summarizes some parameters that can affect experiment result.Finally, an injection micromold is designed after analyzing the process of mold design and comparing with general mold design, the drawing of mold assembly and parts are also given. To optimize the experiment, the molding process is simulated through Moldflow using PP material. The injection pressure, the mold temperature and the plastic melt temperature are mainly investigated through the simulation.