Development of low-cost microequipment

In this article an alternative technology of micromechanical device production is considered. This technology is based on micromachine tools and microassembly devices. The micromachine tools and microassembly devices could be produced as sequential generations of microequipment. This paper describes the efforts and some results of first generation microequipment prototyping. A micromachining center having overall sizes 130 × 160 × 85 mm was produced and characterized. This center permits one to manufacture micromechanical details having the sizes from 50 μm to 5 mm. These details have complex 3D-shape (for example, screw, gear, graduated shaft, conic details, etc.), and are made from different materials, for example, brass, steel, different plastics, etc. We started to investigate and make prototypes of the assembly microdevices controlled by a computer vision system. An example of the proposed technology applications (microfilters) is also described in this paper.