Manufacturing

The Cutting Edge of Manufacturing just got Sharper

  • Posted by Dienamics
  • August 8, 2013

Manufacturing processes hinge on the practice of making large quantities of uniform items. Creating uniform items allows for a standardised quality of product, which is one of the fundamental premises of market economics.

Manufacturers will make as many copies of an item as they can without compromising their product’s quality. Technical advances have allowed for manufacturers to standardise complicated, small and delicate products for the market.

It appears that manufacturers have reached a new pinnacle for producing small, complicated items. Engineers from the Institute of Technology at Karlsruhe have unveiled a method for reliably producing jigsaw puzzles on the scale of sand grains. Their method represents a breakthrough for injection moulding practices throughout the world.

The choice to manufacture a miniature jigsaw puzzle was purely demonstrative. Obviously miniature jigsaw puzzles hold little market value or commercial applicability. However the puzzle pieces’ complexity and the precision required to make them will easily translate into practical applications.

Source: http://news.discovery.com/tech/gear-and-gadgets/the-worlds-tiniest-3d-jigsaw-puzzle-130715.htm