Graduate and Ph.d. Course on Design and Manufacture of Micro Mechanical Systems

Micro mechanical components play an increasing role in micro systems with product dimensions ranging from micrometers to millimetres. The use of metals, polymers and ceramics for miniature components requires product development methods as well as specific manufacturing technologies. Indeed it is now well known that micro/nanotechnology is not only a matter of downscaling applications and methods from the macro scale, and therefore an in-depth understanding and knowledge of product and process characteristics at this scale is necessary. Based on this challenge, a new course was developed at the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the Technical University of Denmark. This paper describes the framework of the course that has been applied both at graduate and Ph.D. level. The current structure of the course as well as the pedagogical approach and some examples of final projects will be presented. Moreover, the transformation of the traditional semester structure (13 weeks and 3 weeks project) into a 2 weeks PhD summer school is discussed.