Study of an Identification Method of the Mesoscale Tool Position

Abstract

The increasing demand for micro/mesoscale components for electronic, biological, and medical applications has brought about continuing developments in mechanical micromachining. Various economic and technical advantages have led to decreases in the overall sizes of the machine tools used in this process, which are known as mesoscale machine tools (MMTs). Rather than shrinking and adapting conventional instruments, this technical trend has motivated the development of new techniques involving clamping devices, inspection, spindles, etc. This study reviewed possible detection techniques for mesoscale tool positioning, including conductivity-based, laser-beam, thin-plate, and acoustic-emission (AE) methods. Preliminary experimental studies of the laser-beam and AE methods were carried out using simple test beds.