On March 28th and 29th I attended this year’s Micro / Nano Manufacturing Conference in Boston, hosted by The Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME). The primary tracks this year were nano manufacturing, micro machining, micro molding, and micro metrology. Two years ago I attended this same conference in Mesa, AZ, and was obviously overdue for another visit.
Harvard’s Microrobotics Lab is publishing some amazing work regarding a MEMS fabrication technique for creating 3-dimensional millimeter-scale robots from 2-dimensional multi-layer components.
Recently, I published an article in MicroManufacturing Magazine about the challenges of designing microparts for manufacture. Not unlike any collaborative process, good communication is the key to a successful project.
A good designer must often think like a manufacturer. The question, “Can this be made?” is asked over and over again during the design process. Shortly thereafter, the question also becomes, “Can this be made cheaply?”
I was recently interviewed for an article regarding the state of rapid prototyping as it pertains to micro-scale manufacturing and product development. From what I’ve seen, the prototyping processes are just not down to the micro-scale, yet. Granted, the micromanufacturing industry is still pretty young, and it’s been growing so quickly in size and capabilities that I expect to see more rapid prototyping solutions soon.
At Key Tech, we’ve been designing micro-scale parts for some time, but finding vendors capable of manufacturing such parts has been difficult. I went to the SME MicroManufacturing conference to better understand the state of the entire micromanufacturing industry as well as identify vendors with specialized capabilities. I think the conference was a success on both counts.
