High-Precision Gluing Tasks Based on Thick Films of Glue and a Microrobotics Approach

Micro-assembly using glue is an industrial need, but at the microscale, the gluing process appears highly challenging. Especially when the thickness of the glue film is large relative to the size of components to be assembled. Moreover, the down-scaling of passive techniques used at the macroscale (such as using reference surfaces) are widespread, but require highly complex and dedicated procedures to reach the required precision (typically 1 μm or below). To address this, we propose an original approach for micro-assembly that consists of using a thick film of glue (glue thickness typically >50 μm) with an active microrobotic control. This approach enables us to have high precision positioning of the two components during the gluing task. The proposed approach appears highly versatile and flexible because it is independent of many parameters that usually influence gluing tasks. Several experiments without the use of the proposed approach show that the typical order of positional drift from curing could be of 5 to 15 μm. Finally, experimental results using the proposed approach demonstrate that a positioning accuracy of 200 nm can typically be obtained, which validates the approach and suggests its potential interest to industry.