Thread Forming of a Micro Screw for Storage Devices Using Finite Element Analysis

Abstract

High precision micro screws have been widely required for the fastening parts of electronic storage devices. Teeth’s forming of the micro screw is generally utilized by a cold thread rolling process with a flat die. This process for micro sized parts has some difficulties such as the design of die shape, alignment between dies, and process managements. In this paper, it is focused on the effect of the alignment between dies and material, and process parameters in simulation. The investigated parameters are the friction coefficient and the relative position between stationary and moving dies using a numerical simulation. The simulations provide that the shear friction factor of 0.9 is proper for preventing slip between dies and raw material and the relative position of two dies has to be set to the half length of the pitch for maintaining the continuous thread profiles. The deformed shapes of the pitch part and the top part of threads can be demonstrated the feature of experimental result. The folding phenomenon appeared at the top part of threads, which seemed to be induced by a lack of the metal flow under micro sized deformation.