Search

The micromachining technique for the fabrication of Fe-36%Ni (Invar®) microgrooves using a novel laser-induced wet etching system with an optical fiber as the light waveguide and machining tool is investigated. Microgrooves fabricated at the optimal process conditions with the proposed etching system have good surface morphology and dimensional accuracy. It is shown that the variation of etch profiles such as etch width and depth depends significantly upon the process parameters. Fiber damage, which is attributed to macrobubbles, can be dramatically reduced by adjusting the distance between the workpiece surface and the fiber terminal. The effects of process parameters such as laser power, scan speed, and threshold distance on etch width, depth, and crosssectional profiles are reported and the optimal process conditions to fabricate Invar® microgrooves with excellent shape and size are provided. Also, the applicability of the Invar® microgrooves for the manufacturing of shadow mask for an organic light emitting diode (OLED) is demonstrated.

The curing characteristics of a photocurable resin are critical factors that often decide the ultimate resolution and structural sharpness of a final product fabricated by microstereolithography (μ-STL). In this study, we investigated the curing characteristics of the FA1260T photopolymer under a visible laser light of 442nm wavelength. Modification of the curing property of the FA1260T is attempted to reduce the cure depth (Dc) by adding a radical quencher to the resin. Also, an organic solvent was used to reduce the resin viscosity for an improvement of the flatness of the liquid surface during layer-by-layer curing. As a result, the minimum Dc has been reduced over a factor of 3 with no abrupt increase. Samples of three dimensional microstructures fabricated using the modified FA1260T are presented.

A computer program to calculate the strip temperature heated in the continuous annealing furnace was developed, using the zone method for radiative heat transfer analysis with the measured gas temperature in the furnace. Using theFEOperator, the present study considered the effects of soot and transient species, in addition to the H2O−CO2gas mixture on the gas radiative heat transfer. The predicted strip temperature distribution forFE=1.05 represented well the measured data. The maximum difference in the heat flux transfered to the strip from the combustion gas forFE=1.0 (without soot and transient species gas radiation) and 1.05 (with soot and transient species gas radiation) was about 15%. The present study also investigated the effects of line speed and thickness variations on the strip temperature, establishing the bases for the on-line computer model.