• Transactions of Materials Processing
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• v.15 no.4 s.85
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• pp.304-310
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• 2006

Due to a recent growth of the area of MEMS and a trend moving toward smaller scale, a micro manufacturing that is usually related with lithography is now emerging. Differently from traditional manufacturing processes, the micro or miniature manufacturing usually requires expensive sophisticated equipments and its characteristics are of high cost and of low productivity. However, a miniature stamping, which makes small sized product with a thin metal usually in the range of meso-scale, can be realized in a low cost and in a high productivity with relatively inexpensive equipments. For a successful development of miniature stamping, lots of obstacles, including material properties related with formability, have to be overcome. Since the thin metal shows distinctive characteristics, e.g., size effect and statistically scattered material properties, the formability of miniature stamping is not good in general and the possible shape with the miniature stamping is limited relatively simple shapes. Since the optimal blank improves formability and the improved formability can make up for problems of material properties, the possibility of success can be increased. This study is carried out to show the possibility of miniature stamping and to verify the effect of optimal blank for the miniature stamping.

• Transactions of Materials Processing
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• v.15 no.3 s.84
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• pp.247-254
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• 2006

Rather than traditional manufacturing processes, miniature manufacturing processes usually require sophisticated equipments and characteristics of the processes of high cost and of low productivity. Contrarily, miniature stamping process can be realized in a low cost high productivity with relatively inexpensive equipments. In the meso scale, mechanical properties, especially work hardening characteristics, are discovered to be statically scattered and size dependent by intensive experimental and numerical investigations, which make the stamping process hard to apply to the miniature manufacturing. In this study, dual purpose experimental device that can be used for both miniature scale tensile test and miniature scale stamping by simple change of attachment has been developed. For the tensile test, the elongation has been measured with a combined use of a CCD camera and a linear encoder in order to account for the possibility of slippage between specimen and the grip and to ensure the accuracy of the measurement, while load has been measured with a load cell. To satisfy the required material properties for stamping, optimal annealing condition has been found by examining the microstructure of annealed specimen.