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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Article
Plasma Nitriding-Assisted Printing of Stainless Steel Punches for Micro-piercing Process
Author(s)
Tatsuhiko Aizawa and Tomomi Shiratori
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DOI:10.17265/2159-5275/2017.01.001
Affiliation(s)
ABSTRACT
MEMS (micro-electric-mechanical-system) required for
miniature, thin mechanical parts as a structural member; e.g., the miniature pumping
system consisted of ten to twelve thin metallic plates before joining. At present,
those thin shaped sheets were fabricated by the chemical etching. Their geometric
inaccuracy as well as long leading time often became an engineering issue. Micro-piercing
process was expected to make mass production of thin sheet products with complex
and accurate geometry for much shorter leading time once the die for this micro-piercing
was built in. In
the present paper, a new plasma nitriding-assisted
printing was proposed as an automatic production line to fabricate the micro-piercing
punch. After preparation of CAD-data of the punch head, its two dimensional geometry
was ink-jet printed directly on the AISI420 stainless steel die-substrate. The unprinted
surface area was only plasma nitrided at 693 K for 14.4 ks to transform this two
dimensional micro-pattern to the three dimensional hardness distribution in the
AISI420 substrate. Through the mechanical removal of ink-jet printed area,
the flat punch head with sharp edge corners was fabricated in much shorter duration
time than the end-milling. SEM-EDX, surface profiling measurement as well as micro-hardness
testing were employed to describe each step in the above plasma printing. The
thin MEMS stainless steel part with a micro-pendulum as well as three S-letter shaped
springs was taken for an example to describe this automatic production procedure
of plasma printing from the CAD data mining to the micro-piercing punch finishing.
KEYWORDS
Plasma printing, ink-jet printing, plasma nitriding, sand-blasting, micro-piercing, stainless steel punch.
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