The proposed tooling strategy offers high flexibility and cost effectiveness. Additionally, it provides more freedom and testing opportunities during the development of new micro devices. The most common used tooling strategy is direct manufacturing of the tool by micro milling. When the features of the tool are rather ribs then grooves, the tooling strategy proposed in Figure has a great advantage over micro milling tool manufacturing, which is the most common used tooling strategy. In the latter case, an end-mill with a relatively small diameter has to remove relatively big volume of the tool which is time consuming and not cost effective.
The main application field of the proposed tooling strategy is the design and development of micro-fluidic devices. Typically, these devices require a well-controlled geometry and surface roughness. With this technology these devices can be manufactured relatively fast and in a cost effective way. Therefore many new concepts and designs can be experimentally validated during the development phase in order to improve the performance of the final product. In the actual context of R&D, flexibility in the manufacturing process enables variety and innovation in the design. The proposed tooling strategy consumes most of its machining time in MEDM machining while WJ machining accounts just for a small portion of the total machining time. However, facing this sequence of different processes, WJ machining of the MEDM tool has an important influence on the final result.
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