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D. Petrovic, G. Popovic, E. Chatzitheodoridis, O. Del Medico, A. Almansa, H. Detter, W. Brenner:
"Mechanical gripper system for handling and assembly in MEMS";
Talk: SPIE The International Society for Optical Engineering, San Francisco, USA; 10-22-2001 - 10-24-2001; in: "Micromachining and Microfabrication Process Technology VII", SPIE- The International Society for Optical Engineering, Volume 4557 (2001), ISBN: -0-8194-4285-2; 151 - 156.

Nowadays the application of specially designed grippers in micro technology is an important topic and a necessity for the industrialisation. In order to transfer the manual assembly of micro electro mechanical system (MEMS) to an automatic assembly process, specially designed handling tools with sensing capabilities are required. Keeping the dimensions of the microparts in mind the handling and assembly process requires supervision with microscopes, positioning with high precision and application of specially designed tools. This paper describes a miniaturised mechanical gripper system with specially designed grippers and with implemented force-feedback for general microassembly purpose. The described grippers are fabricated from spring steel by wire electro-discharge-machining (EDM). The design of the microgripping system allows handling of pieces with sizes from 10µm up to 2 mm.