The University of British Columbia

This paper describes a new micromachining method which can produce ultrafine patterned high-aspect-ratio micro components from various kinds of materials that include those which cannot be used by silicon or the LIGA processes. This method, based on micro electro-discharge machining employs patterned high-aspect-ratio machining electrodes fabricated by the LIGA process. With this method patterned structures of several metals such as stainless steel and tungsten carbide super hard alloy have been successfully machined with short machining times. In this machining, copper electrodes electroplated via the LIGA process show good performance as far as wear resistance in the fine discharge energy region is concerned. Multiple structures have been also produced in parallel by using an electrode array. These results show that this method can be used to produce high-aspect-ratio micro components. It also shows that structures from materials which cannot be used by other micromachining techniques have become possible