MICRO MACHINING | ARTICLE
Practical Applications Through the reconfiguration of machines, chemistry and process parameters, Precision Micro has been involved in countless successful projects involving photochemical etching of aluminium.
One such was work was undertaken for a leading helicopter manufacturer and involved the etching of aluminium air intake grilles. This was a not a mass volume project by any means, and the parts were certainly not as feature rich as many that Precision Micro works with (photochemical etching typically being associated with high volume runs of complex parts). However, etching was the chosen manufacturing process as other alternative technologies introduced stress into the components. As this was an aerospace application, weight was a key factor, so the client demanded the use of aluminium due to inherent weight savings, and the project was successfully completed thanks to Precision Micro’s combination of chemistry, process, and machine adaptations.
In another aerospace application, Precision Micro successfully applied similar techniques to the manufacture of numerous different aluminium parts that made up a dehumidifier used in aircraft cabins. For this application, aluminium was used for a variety of reasons, key among which was its low weight, but also its thermal characteristics. Precision Micro produced etched channels and precision apertures in many of these parts, photochemical etching being the manufacturing process of choice as use of stamping would have been prohibitively expensive due to the need for 36 different stamping tools. In addition, stamping would not have been able to achieve the necessary cross section of the profiles which were essential to achieve the flow and thermal profile specified. Also, photo-chemical etching meant that there were no re-cast layers which are typical of some machining processes such as EDM.
One final application was for an audio equipment manufacturer that required planar ribbon tweeters for high-end recording studio speakers. On this project, Precision Micro etched 20 micron aluminium from a 40 micron kapton backing which needed to be kept intact. This material would have been too thin to stamp successfully, and stamping would also have compromised the kapton backing.
>> Continued on page 20 19 | commercial micro manufacturing international Vol 7 No.4
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