Chafaï Adam, Ibrahimi Amin, Lambert Pierre
Transfers, Interfaces and Processes (TIPs) Department, Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB), CP 165/67, 50 Av. F.D. Roosevelt, 1050 Brussels, Belgium.
Department of Mechical Engineering, Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), Bd. de la Paine 2, 1050 Brussels, Belgium.
Micromachines (Basel). 2022 Aug 16;13(8):1323. doi: 10.3390/mi13081323.
Capillary forces are shown to be extremely effective for micro-assembly and pick-and-place processes, especially for their ability to self-align the handled objects. However, in today's machines, micro-objects are submitted to high loads, such as compressions for the electrical testing of the micro-components, or inertial forces coming from the high accelerations of the machines. There, capillary grippers may show some limits. These issues, as well as the difficulty to perform precise visual inspections (due to the tilt of the handled micro-object that can occur after a perturbation, such as the displacement of the gripper), can all be solved by temporarily removing the liquid meniscus. Therefore, we present a novel volume-tuning capillary gripper that provides a solution to these limitations without adding additional significant complexities or changes to the existing pick-and-place machines. A multi-scale prototype was dimensioned and produced by using fast prototyping methods, such as a femtosecond laser-assisted chemical etching process for fused silica. Models bringing a deeper understanding of the subsystems are presented. The proof of concept was extensively tested. Its picking capabilities and enhancements of the handling capabilities during horizontal motions, as well as the repeatability of the tuning of the volume of liquid, are presented.
毛细作用力在微组装和拾取与放置过程中显示出极高的效率，特别是其能够使被操作物体自动对齐。然而，在当今的机器中，微物体承受着高负荷，例如在对微组件进行电气测试时的压缩力，或者机器高加速度产生的惯性力。在这种情况下，毛细夹具可能会显示出一些局限性。这些问题，以及进行精确视觉检查的困难（由于在诸如夹具位移等扰动后被操作的微物体可能会发生倾斜），都可以通过暂时去除液体弯月面来解决。因此，我们提出了一种新型的体积调节毛细夹具，它为解决这些局限性提供了一种方案，而无需对现有的拾取与放置机器增加额外的显著复杂性或进行改变。通过使用快速成型方法，如用于熔融石英的飞秒激光辅助化学蚀刻工艺，设计并制造了一个多尺度原型。还展示了能更深入理解子系统的模型。对概念验证进行了广泛测试。展示了其拾取能力、水平运动过程中处理能力的增强以及液体体积调节的可重复性。
