Development of micro punching system

A micro hole punching system was developed and micro holes of 100 mum in diameter were successfully made on brass sheets of 100 mum in thickness. A micro punch made of tungsten carbide was designed to withstand the punch load, considering the buckling and the bending moment due to possible misalignment error, The punch was fabricated by the grinding process with diamond wheel. The die was designed considering the punch load and fabricated by micro electrodischarge machining process. In this system the stripper is designed to guide punch tip to minimize the possible misalignment. The punch was installed on a vertical stepper and the die was mounted on an X-Y translation unit. The precision motion controller controlled all motions of the micro hole punching system. In this study technical difficulties and solutions in the micro hole punching process were also discussed.