Erreka’s keys to injection moulding in microfluidics
In microfluidic chip manufacturing, the quality of the injection moulded part is a determining factor for good part performance. Injection moulded parts must meet certain conditions to achieve a perfect bond for channel closure, such as precise edges and good flatness.
This requires several actions:
- Redesign of parts for the mould insert manufacturing process.
- It is necessary to decide on a suitable mould manufacturing process, taking into account the limitation of different technologies, such as nickel inserts, femtosecond laser ablation inserts or micro-milling processes.
- It will be necessary to choose the right tool material to achieve the desired levels of transparency, roughness, lifetime…
- Redesign of parts from the injection moulding point of view.
- The behaviour of the polymer as it crystallises must be taken into account in order to redesign the part and achieve a more robust process to achieve the necessary bonding conditions, avoiding the effects of shrinkage.
- Selection of the best methodology for the injection process.
- Different injection moulding processes can be chosen to produce the required parts. Quality, cycle time, repeatability requirements, transparency or price may be some of the factors in choosing between conventional, variothermic, compression or other injection moulding processes.
- The best equipment to ensure process repeatability.
- To obtain repeatable and reliable quality parts from microfluidic components, it is necessary to choose high-precision and repeatable equipment not only in the injection moulding machine, but also in all the necessary peripherals.
Erreka can help your company in all those designs and decisions about microfluidic components, with redesign, mould making, process definition, and injection of parts with the defined quality conditions.
If you have any questions on this subject, do not hesitate to contact Erreka by sending an email to medical@erreka.com.