Micro-hole fabrication by mechanical punching process

In the present investigation, micro-hole punching was studied, and the standard punching condition was scaled down to produce 25 mu m size holes. For this, a micro punching press was designed and assembled, meeting requirements of process accuracy for 25 mu m size holes. Tungsten carbide tooling sets were designed and fabricated by micro machining techniques. Three different size holes of 100, 50, and 25 mu m in diameter were punched successfully on thin metallic foils such as brass and stainless steel of 100, 50, and 25 mu m in thickness, respectively. Punched holes were examined in terms of surface qualities and results were analyzed in connection with shear fracture behavior. The results in this paper show that the mechanical punching process is promising to produce high quality holes even in the micro scale application. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.