Assembly of Micro Systems with the High Precision Robot Parvus

Abstract

In recent years, the development of micro systems has been widely discussed in research articles concerning a decrease in size, an increase of complexity and the variety of materials used. In contrast, manufacturing and especially assembly processes of millimetre-sized products with high complexity did not play a significant role. Conventional precision robots that provide adequate accuracies for micro assembly are relatively large and expensive. These machines have to be operated in clean rooms, which results in high costs of maintenance. These days, the assembly technology of electronic production and conventional assembly robots is often no longer suitable for the assembly of hybrid micro systems. The increasing gap between millimetre-sized products and the production machines has lead to a high proportion of manual assembly in the manufacturing process of microproducts. Assembly costs that sometimes account for up to 80 % of the costs of micro systems retard the commercialisation and bulk production of these products. [1] Especially for small and medium-sized businesses, new concepts for flexible and lower-cost micro assembly have to be found.