Bridging the Manufacturing Gap between Macro and Micro Devices

Many manufacturing methods exist that can produce a variety of complex parts. However, a significant need is still unmet in techniques that allow the design and volume production of small, complex, 3-D parts, which contain several different materials. This “Gap” is especially evident for sintered ceramics, metals and ceramic-metal composites. High Volume Print Forming (HVPFTM) is a new technology that helps fill a critical portion of this Gap. HVPFTM provides engineers with new design rules that allow unique designs to be made at low cost from a variety of materials. The technology is a clean-tech additive process and is able to replace some older methods that require etching, machining and other processes that can have negative environmental impacts. The process creates thousands of parts simultaneously at low cost. This new technology is being used to lower the costs and improve the design of existing products and to develop designs that were not cost effective or even possible before. Examples are given in miniature antennas, semiconductor packages, energy harvesting devices and fuel cell parts. HVPFTM builds devices using 3-D voxels of material or “microbricks” and, as a result, offers the potential for a new class of lowcost metamaterials. The metamaterial applications are still under development and the early results are introduced in this paper.