From CAD Through Manufacturing To QualityControl Of Microstructures

Abstract

In the Institute of Applied Computer Science (IAI) in the Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe (FZK) information technologies are developed and applied to support the manufacturing process for micromechanical structures, based on LIGA (German Acronym for Lithographic, Galvanik, Abformung) technique, developed in the Institute for Microstructure Technique (IMT) of the FZK. The information related kernel of the computer integrated manufacturing consists of different semantic clusters. In the first step, at the beginning of the whole manufacturing process, the designer has to construct the microstructure. These 3 -dimensional microstructures are designed with a CAD system for mechanical construction. After application of design checks and design rules, based on heuristics from human experts, these constructions are the references for the quality control of the real fabricated structures. To guarantee an efficient construction and fabrication, on the logical top level of application an expert system is developed, which correlates the different manufacturing semantics and which is responsible for diagnoses of intermediate and final products and instructions to the designer. 1 An Information Concept for Manufacturing Micromechanical Structures In a first approach, the design step, the closed manufacturing process and quality control methods are logical separate domains, but a powerful method to get an integrated manufacturing process is to correlate semantically these three knowledge domains [1]. The quality of the intermediate and final products concerning geometrical and topological features has to be validated, for example with optical quality control methods based on digital image processing techniques. Special knowledge, how Transactions on the Built Environment vol 12, © 1995 WIT Press, www.witpress.com, ISSN 1743-3509