Design and realization of a microassembly workstation

With the miniaturization of products to the levels of micrometers and the recent developments in microsystem fabrication technologies, there is a great need for an assembly process for the formation of complex hybrid microsystems. Integration of microcomponents made up of different materials and manufactured using different micro fabrication techniques is still a primary challenge since some of the fundamental problems originating from the small size of parts to be manipulated, high precision necessity and specific problems of the microworld in that field are still not fully investigated. In this thesis, design and development of an open-architecture and reconfigurable microassembly workstation for efficient and reliable assembly of micromachined parts is presented. The workstation is designed to be used as a research tool for investigation of the problems in microassembly. The development of such a workstation includes the design of: (i) a manipulation system consisting of motion stages providing necessary travel range and precision for the realization of assembly tasks, (ii) a vision system to visualize the microworld and the determination of the position and orientation of micro components to be assembled, (iii) a robust control system and necessary fixtures for the end effectors that allow easy change of manipulation tools and make the system ready for the desired task. In addition tele-operated and semi-automated assembly concepts are implemented. The design is verified by implementing tasks in various ranges for micro-parts manipulation. The versatility of the workstation is demonstrated and high accuracy of positioning is shown.

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