Those of you who have seen the latest cover of Commercial Micro Manufacturing magazine might have been wondering about the parts visible in the cover image.
We asked Mike Fryer, the Sales Director of Insoll, to tell us a bit about the picture and the parts featured. Here is what he said:
We were asked by a manufacturer of miniaturised mobile surveillance equipment if it was possible to replace the metal components, such as bushed and seals, used inside the mechanics of the device, with plastic.
The idea was to achieve a combination of weight saving and improved efficiency that would allow the device to run for longer periods of time due to the reduced loading on the power unit. We had worked on similar projects before but for larger components in the size range of 5 to 30 mm. In this case we were looking at parts of 1 mm diameter with tight tolerance bores and features through the main body. An additional part of the remit was to help with material selection to match the performance of metals. This resulted in polymers such as PEEK and polyimide being specified due to their unique combination of mechanical, high temperature and self-sealing properties. The project then moved to prototype manufacture and we quickly learned that although we had the machining know-how to tackle the problem we needed to develop our processes for handling and cleaning the parts after machining. We are now able to provide the full combination of material knowledge, machining, cleaning and handling as the project moves to volume production.
As an additional element of the project we are looking at other processes, such as injection moulding, to establish if cost down opportunities are feasible without sacrifice to dimensional tolerance and quality obtained by machining. For Insoll the whole experience has presented a launch pad into the world of micro components where we can now utilise our existing technology and know-how to extend our manufacturing service offering. We plan to promote our machining technology to micro component sectors where we see opportunities for advanced engineering polymers to replace metal and ceramic and for manufacturing geometries that are not achievable in plastic by injection moulding.
