MEMS
and components, the assembly part of the product development process must be discussed and considered early in the design cycle, demanding a collaborative and pragmatic relationship between OEM and micro molder. When dealing with micro scale parts and components, the cost of manual assembly is prohibitive and often requires levels of preciseness when dealing with sub- micron tolerances that are impossible to achieve. Automated assembly is therefore a must in most micro molding scenarios, requiring that OEMs select a micro molding partner that is able to understand the methodology of micro assembly and achieve the extreme positional accuracy required.
review and change manufacturing processes, and having to recut already extremely expensive and time-consuming to make micro tools.
The headline over every activity is “get it right the first time.”
Vertical integration enhances the quality, compliance, and conformance to design intent. Micro molders need to understand the CTQs (Critical to Quality characteristics) to manufacture parts successfully, and these characteristics are important to the functionality of the product in terms of the end-user experience and embrace molding, assembly, and packaging.
Good lean principles can be used to exemplify this importance. Value-stream thinking — from concept to order fulfilment — drives customer value. Vertical integration supports a shorter value stream reducing silos and sub-optimized processes. Basically, the longer the value stream, the more disconnected the value stream, and the more variables can be introduced causing customer issues.
Key issues for volume manufacture As a micro molder, Accumold is uniquely positioned due to the physical size of its premises to gear up to long-term volume manufacture for its customers. It also boasts 6 class 8 clean rooms (29,000 square feet in total), and 3 class 7 cleanrooms (10,000 square feet in total). However, there needs to be a continuous focus on improvement, and here the company’s highly skilled tenured workforce comes into its own. Variability is the enemy of high-volume manufacturing, and so the focus needs to be maintained on implementing process controls that drive repeatability all the way from cutting micro tool steel to
measurement and validation methods. In essence, customers want the highest quality products at the lowest possible cost. Product quality requirements are driven by Voice of the Customer (VOC), which enables good micro molders to identify critical product characteristics which need to be verified during production. Cost is more than just the price charged to mold a part. It also includes the time it takes to get a product to market, whether defects make it to market, and also the levels of consistency of supply. So micro molders should strive to supply the highest quality products, through validated processes, with short timelines to market. Realistically, this can only really be accomplished through vertically integrated processes and utilizing process validation. So saying, when short-listing potential micro molding suppliers, from a production perspective there are some key questions that need to be asked to ensure that the micro molder is equipped to achieve often exacting objectives. First, do you design, build, and maintain your molds? Second, what measurement capabilities do you have on site? Third, what are your methods of validation (DOE, IQ, OQ and PQ)? Finally, what resins do you have experience with in production?
The successful manufacture or micro molded products is almost entirely down to the VOC. But it is important to realise that the end user isn’t only the customer, there are customers throughout the entire value stream. The shorter and more centrally located the value stream the quicker concerns can be raised and resolved.
Assembly When dealing with miniaturized plastic parts
The demand is for a laser-like focus on design for micro manufacturing (DfMM), which crucially influences the success of every part of the overall product development process, including assembly. The importance of considering assembly at the design stage of a micro molding product development process is huge, and is an important factor for any project. Micro molding just adds more variables that need to be controlled than a standard sized product for which there are many different manufacturing solution partners in the marketplace. Micro molded parts can be difficult to feed, inspect, and manipulate without causing damage. Capturing a micro molded part as it come out of the mold is often very difficult, as is orienting a micro part after molding. Capturing a part at mold ejection and immediately assembling is often the only route to efficient assembly with low waste.
Such considerations should all be bottomed-out at the design stage to keep costs under control so a customer can maintain margins and provide a product to the market-place at an acceptable price. Before embarking on a micro molding project, customers should focus on the mold design, mold build, and quality measuring capabilities of the vendor they are engaging to mold their parts. If molders lack the ability to design, build, and measure high quality molds to extremely tight tolerances they will struggle to produce consistently high-quality parts to tight tolerances.
Producing products to specifications that only allow microns of variations to a specification is much more challenging than producing a product with significantly larger variation allowances. A poorly designed and built tool can eat up your entire variation before you even mold a part, essentially killing the project.
Accumold
www.accu-mold.com
MAY 2021 | ELECTRONICS TODAY 61
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