Design and Experimental Validation of a Process Chain for Thin Components Manufacturing by Micro Injection Molding Process

Micro-applications, especially in biomedical and optical sectors, require the fabrication of thin polymeric parts which can be commonly realized by micro-injection molding pro- cess. However, this process is characterized by a relevant constraint regarding the tool- ing. Indeed, the design and manufacturing of molds could be a very time-consuming step and so, a significant limitation for the rapid development of new products. Moreover, if the design displays challenging microfeatures, their realization could involve the use of more than one mold for the fabrication of a single thin part. Therefore, proper integration of different manufacturing microtechnologies may represent an advantageous method to realize such polymeric thin microfeatures. In this work, a micromanufacturing process chain including stereolithography, micromilling, and micro-injection molding is reported. The mold for the micro-injection molding process was fabricated by means of stereolithography and micromilling, which allowed us to produce low-cost reconfigurable modular mold, composed of insert support and a removable insert. The assessment of the proposed process chain was carried out by evaluating the dimensions and the surface fin- ishing and texturing of the milled mold cavities and molded components. Finally, a brief economic analysis compares three process chains for fabricating the micromold showing that the proposed one reduces the manufacturing cost by almost 61% with the same pro- duction time.