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these technologies creates new design
options—allowing the engineer to create
smaller, thinner, lighter and morefunctional
end products.”
Vartanian added that most approach-
In brief…
Every day brings news of exciting micromanufacturingrelated
research underway at the nation’s universities. Below
is a sampling of five ongoing research projects. Additional
information about each can be found on our Web
site, www.micromanufacturing.com.
Laser/lathe combo takes on brittle materials. Researchers
at Western Michigan University have built a hybrid
machine that reportedly cuts brittle, difficult-to-machine
materials—like glass, ceramics and porcelain—in a highly
efficient manner. The machine combines single-point-diamond
turning and lasing. In operation, the beam of a nearinfrared
fiber laser passes through an optically transparent
diamond cutting tool and emerges at a point on the workpiece
just in front of the tool’s cutting edge. The laser softens
the workpiece material before the tool cuts it, which eliminates
fracturing of brittle parts and lowers tool wear.
Laser beam
Plastic deformation/
chip formation
High-pressure-phasetransformation
region
Depth
of cut
Load
-45° rake angle Single crystal diamond tool
Western Michigan University
With WMU’s µLAM machine, a laser beam is directed through a
diamond cutting tool, ahead of the cutting edge.
Memory chip can take the heat. Rice University researchers
have developed transparent memory chips that are
flexible enough to be folded in half and can survive hostile
conditions, including 1,000° F temperatures. Speaking at
the 243rd National Meeting & Exposition of the American
Chemical Society, Rice chemist James M. Tour said devices
that incorporate the chips can retain data despite an accidental
trip through a clothes dryer—or even a voyage to
Mars. And, with their unique 3-D internal architecture, the
new chips can store extra gigabytes of data while consuming
less space.
Short circuiting implantable-device hackers. Researchers
10 | MAY/JUNE 2012 | MICROmanufacturing
Cutting direction
Cutting edge radius
Machined surface
Ceramic workpiece
es used to print electronics are based on
traditional 2-D printing methods, such
as inkjet and screen printing. These
methods don’t work for printing electronics
that must conform to the shape
at Purdue and Princeton universities have produced a prototype
device that works as a firewall to block hackers from
interfering with implantable, wireless medical devices, such
as pacemakers, insulin-delivery systems and brain implants,
according to a Purdue press release. Operationally, the device
relies on “multilayered anomaly detection” technology
to identify potentially
malicious transactions.
When detected,
the firewall alerts the
patient or blocks “malicious
packets” from
reaching the medical
device via electronic-
jamming technology.
The Purdue-Princeton
prototype, dubbed
MedMon (short for
of 3-D structures.
The joint venture’s first project is
the development of a “smart wing”
for an unmanned aerial vehicle
(UAV) model. The wing incorporates
Boston University
Boston University researchers
developed this microfluidic device for
diagnosing the flu.
medical monitor), can be worn like a necklace or installed
in a cell phone.
Self-assembly with ‘smart sand.’ Scientists at Massachusetts
Institute of Technology’s Distributed Robotics Laboratory
have developed algorithms that would enable heaps
of smart sand to assume any shape, allowing spontaneous
formation of new tools or duplication of broken mechanical
parts. Unlike many other approaches to self-assembly,
smart sand follows a subtractive method, akin to stone
carving, rather than an additive method, such as snapping
LEGO blocks together. With smart sand, individual grains
pass messages back and forth and selectively attach to each
other to form a 3-D object.
Point-of-care device diagnoses flu. Researchers in the Biomedical
Engineering Department at Boston University have
published results of a 4-year study that reportedly validates
the prototype of a rapid, low-cost, point-of-care microfluidic
device capable of quickly diagnosing the flu. “The researchers
miniaturized an expensive 3-hour, lab-scale diagnostic
test—known as RT-PCR and [currently] considered
the gold standard in flu detection—into a single-use microfluidic
chip,” according to a report posted on the BU Web
site. About the size of a microscope slide, the chip consists
of a column at the top that extracts ribonucleic acid (RNA)
from a sample associated with a flu virus, a middle chamber
that converts the RNA into deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA)
and a channel at the bottom that replicates enough of the
DNA to allow it to be read by an external device.