A review on micro-forming technologies: characteristics and trends for their industrial application.

In the last few years, micro manufacturing technologies have become increasingly important. There are many components on the micrometer scale, both in high-level applications and in everyday use. This trend occurs in several areas such as in the field of industrial, mainly in automotive and aerospace, electronics components, medical devices, etc. Within the different micro manufacturing technologies, the paper focuses on micro forming technologies due to their great advantages over other micro manufacturing technologies. Metal forming processes are characterized by almost no material waste, excellent mechanical properties and are suitable for high volume production. In this paper shows a review of the main research related to micro forming technologies. The research carried out are given according to the four primary groups of a micro manufacturing system: material, process, tools, and equipment. The problems associated with miniaturisation in each primary group are shown. Finally, solutions adopted to implement micro forming technologies in the industrial field are shown. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]