A cost-effective approach using recycled materials to fabricate micro-hot embossing dies for microfabrication

Green manufacturing is a good approach to reduction of the production cost in the research and development stage of a new product, especially for a rapid tooling for small volume production. The purpose of this work is to develop a rapid tooling using recycled Al-filled epoxy resins. The compressive strength of the samples fabricated by the mixture of different kinds of epoxy resins and different particle sizes of recycled Al-filled epoxy resin powders were investigated experimentally. It was found that the 174 AB epoxy resins seem to be a good candidate for mixing recycled Al-filled epoxy resin powders. The 1:0.5 is the optimal mixing weight ratio for mixing epoxy resin and recycled Al-filled epoxy resin powders. The compressive strength of the test specimens is 95% of that fabricated fully by commercial materials. For a precision hot embossing die with dimensions of 70 mm in length, 70 mm in width, and 15 mm in height, the total manufacturing cost savings about 26.6% and the last process manufacturing cost savings about 50.4% can be obtained using the method proposed in this work.