Possibilities of using the high-pressure water jet for the manufacture of microcomponents

Because of the increasing miniaturisation of components, the conventional fabrication processes such as drilling, milling and turning are coming up against limiting factors in microsystems technology. One interesting alternative is cutting using a high-pressure water jet. It was possible to fabricate gearwheels with an outside diameter of 780 μm on a cutting installation which permitted a contour resolution of ′0.007 mm. The cutting parameters, particularly the advance speed, were optimised first of all. Furthermore, the diverging proportion of the water jet was blanked out using a cover sheet. In this way, it was possible to manufacture complex, sharp-edged and right-angle contours on metallic miniature components with complex external contours and high qualities.