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Events for March 14, 2005
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Spring Recess
Mon, Mar 14, 2005
Viterbi School of Engineering Student Affairs
University Calendar
Audiences: Undergraduate and Graduate Students
Contact: Monica De Los Santos
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Seminar : Silicon Insert Molded Plastics Process for an Elastically Averaged Connector Design
Mon, Mar 14, 2005 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Patrick WilloughbyPh.D. Candidate,
Department of Mechanical Engineering,
Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyABSTRACTAs demand for smaller devices continues to increase, current manufacturing processes will find it more challenging to meet cost, quantity, and dimensional requirements. While microfabrication technology processes can create electronic devices in vast quantities with increasingly smaller dimensions, they are challenged to do so for mechanical devices at low cost and in large quantity. More traditional manufacturing processes such as machining or injection molding can more easily meet cost and quantity requirements, but cannot currently match the dimensional abilities of microfabrication processes. By merging microfabrication and traditional injection molding techniques in a process called Silicon Insert Molded Plastics (SIMP), the benefits of both technologies can be combined to produces parts to meet all three requirements. Silicon inserts have been manufactured using microfabrication techniques allowing for tolerances, smoothness, and dimensions at a nanoscale level. Using these types of basic primitive features, more complex structures were formed by bonding several sections of silicon together. Silicon inserts were secured into a mold created using traditional machining operations and initial fidelity tests parts were molded with features on the order of 10 micrometers. To demonstrate the capabilities of this process, a new fiber optic connector has been designed with the SIMP process in mind. The connector design employs the technique of elastic averaging, which represents a subset of surface coupling types where improved accuracy is derived from the averaging of errors over a large number of relatively compliant contacting members. Although the repeatability and accuracy obtained through elastic averaging may not be as high as in deterministic systems, elastic averaging design allows for higher stiffness and lower local stress when compared to kinematic couplings. An analytical model of the elastic averaging coupling has been developed to predict the effects of manufacturing variations on the design, with verification using scaled bench-level experiments.
Location: Ethel Percy Andrus Gerontology Center (GER) - 309
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Shah Nirav
