Micro manufacturing has developed into many areas over the past decade. Several manufacturing technologies are available but the precision and accuracy of the techniques are still difficult to get access to. Typically the capability information of micro milling equipment is based on specifications given by the machine deliverers. The specified high accuracy is likely to be altered in practice because of environmental conditions and operator skills. So in practice the absolute performances of micro milling/machining equipment may be far off from their listed specifications. When forming the EUMINAfab infrastructure consortium it was decided that independent high precision verification testsshould be made on different installations to help the micro-manufacturers to get the real capability information of their equipment and be able to improve performance to a higher EUMINAfab level. In this study a comprehensive verification test was designed and carried out by using an ultra-precision metrology method for 2D measurements in order to establish more knowledge about the capabilities of micro milling equipment. The measurement results show the machine’s X,Y positioning accuracy, pseudo-repeatability, reproducibility and axis straightness of two different micro milling installations.

Laser micro-machining is a growing field for micro manufacturing in many different materials. To obtain a better understanding of the accuracy of laser micro-machining equipment, moreover machine’s specification, a precise verification test is needed to measure the absolute performance of the machine. Available capability information is usually based on specifications given for the machine installations by machine deliverers. But in practice the absolute performances of some of the micro laser machines are way far off from their specifications. When forming the EUMINAfab infrastructure consortium it was decided that independent high precision verification tests should be made on different installations to help the micro-manufacturers to get the real capability information of their equipment and be able to improve performance to a higher EUMINAfab level. In this study a comprehensive verification test was designed and carried out by using an ultra-precision metrology method in order to establish more knowledge about the capabilities of the laser micro-machining equipment. The measurement results show the machine’s X,Y position accuracy, pseudo-repeatability and reproducibility of three different laser micro-machining installations.

The need for accurate measurements of long range low amplitude topographic structure of specular (glossy) surfaces has been increased in automotive and aircraft industries. Optical measurement techniques are the most successful techniques to measure different surface structures with high resolution and high accuracy and at high speed. However, for glossy, specular surfaces many commercial techniques based on surface scattering fail. Fringe Reflection Technique (FRT), mimicking the human observation process of specular surfaces, is then a robust and suitable solution for measuring these surfaces. In our research we are interested in measuring waviness in the micron range over cm long spatial wavelengths. The artefact investigated is a flat casted and painted composite surface. By using a simple and non-expensive FRT-setup, combined with image analysis algorithms high resolution data were obtained. The results match well with reference data obtained by a Coherix interferometer with height measures of some ten micrometers over waviness having a lateral structure of several cm.