19 Oct A Discussion on Micro-Design & Manufacturing Costs
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?” It may be true that in the Field of Dreams if you build it, he will come, but in the World of Consumers if you build it cheaply, he will come… along with his friends, family, and colleagues.
The traditional way to make a product cheaper has always been subtraction – in essence, minimizing the size and complexity of a device without sacrificing its performance. Size and complexity reductions can drive down costs on materials, packaging, and shipping, while also favoring higher-throughput production and the use of disposable parts – an increasingly important consideration in biomedical applications. With that said, the simpler and smaller approach is not without limitations, and these limitations are being tested now by “hugely small” applications.
In the case of micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS), microfluidic chips, nano-sensing technology, and numerous other scale-intensive fields, reduced size is actually a profound contributor to increased complexity. And while these innovative fields show tremendous promise for the future, they currently pose costly manufacturing hurdles as a consequence. The cost of prototyping and manufacturing micro-parts should be carefully weighed when considering whether or not to pursue an otherwise-avoidable micro-approach. As of now, these costs can quickly consume the benefits of implementing questionable technology since this often requires several iterations of low-volume custom components. Lab-on-a-chip devices are a good example prone to this paradoxical limbo. Even a relatively straightforward microfluidic component can require robust interfaces and innovative prototyping and assembly processes to ensure proper functionality. Before long, the microfluidic system isn’t so “micro” anymore – in size or cost.
So what can designers and our manufacturing comrades do to advance the cost effectiveness of these emerging technologies? For starters, let’s abandon subtraction and opt for addition; additional measures to define and achieve design tolerances, additional manufacturing techniques for creating repeatable micron and sub-micron parts, additional design features for ease of alignment during assembly, additional quality assurance measures to assess as-built dimensions, and – most importantly – additional communication between manufacturers and designers for continued success on the field of dreams we now find ourselves playing.
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