Relying on the good chemical and temperature stability, optical properties, biocompatibility, sterilizing ability and the possibility to be cleaned easily of glasses, micro-structured glass parts are applied in many fields with billions of dolloars potential market. However, the current micro glass parts producing technologies can not realize the mass low-cost production of micro glass parts (2D area 99%) and rapid processing time ( the presented fabrication concept is proposed and realized on the base of a desk top glass micro injection molding machine schematically illustrated as Fig.1. This device will comprise of four main parts, which are melting/storage unit, dosing/injection unit, mould assembling/clamping unit, variotherm unit and vacuum assistant unit. The process cycle can be described as: firstly, glass granulates are precisely delivered into the melting container by metering their mass, and glass melts in melting container will be dosed by the precise liner piston into the injection cylinder. After venting airs out of the mold, injection piston/screw will press glass melts in precisely dosed volume totally into the micro cavity. Meanwhile, the mold is kept at the temperature near the melting temperature of the glass. Finally, the mold is cooled down and final glass parts with micro structures but no runner system will be achieved.
Melting/storage unit
The melting/storage unit should reach the requirement of rapid (heating efficiency der to shorten cycle time, a variotherm mold temperature control unit with rapid heating/cooling function will be integrated. It is going to be realized by a multi-layer structure tool which will be fabricated with several layers of thermo conductive, thermo insulation, electrical conductive and electrical insulation.
Vacuum assistant unit
The evacuation unit will play the role of producing negative pressure cavity atmosphere being helpful for melts to fill into micro cavities.