Hybrid Two-Scale Fabrication of Sub-Millimetric Capillary Grippers

Capillary gripping is a pick-and-place technique that is particularly well-suited for handling sub-millimetric components. Nevertheless, integrating a fluid supply and release mechanism becomes increasingly difficult to manufacture for these scales. In the present contribution, two hybrid manufactur...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Micromachines (Basel) 2019-03, Vol.10 (4), p.224
Main Authors: Dehaeck, Sam, Cavaiani, Marco, Chafai, Adam, Tourtit, Youness, Vitry, Youen, Lambert, Pierre
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
3-D printers
Capillary gripper
Engineering, computing & technology
Grippers
Ingénierie mécanique
Ingénierie, informatique & technologie
Lithography
Manufacturing
Materials handling
Mechanical engineering
Microchannels
Micromanufacturing
Molding (process)
Photonics
Pick and place
Polydimethylsiloxane
polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) replication
Polymerization
stereolithography
Substrates
Three dimensional printing
two-photon polymerization
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Summary:Capillary gripping is a pick-and-place technique that is particularly well-suited for handling sub-millimetric components. Nevertheless, integrating a fluid supply and release mechanism becomes increasingly difficult to manufacture for these scales. In the present contribution, two hybrid manufacturing procedures are introduced in which the creation of the smallest features is decoupled from the macro-scale components. In the first procedure, small scale features are printed directly (by two-photon polymerisation) on top of a 3D-printed device (through stereolithography). In the second approach, directional ultraviolet (UV)-illumination and an adapted design allowed for successful (polydimethylsiloxane, PDMS) moulding of the microscopic gripper head on top of a metal substrate. Importantly, a fully functional microchannel is present in both cases through which liquid to grip the components can be supplied and retracted. This capability of removing the liquid combined with an asymmetric pillar design allows for a passive release mechanism with a placement precision on the order of 3% of the component size.
ISSN:2072-666X
2072-666X
DOI:10.3390/mi10040224