A Hair Here

MANUFACTURING

THE WORLD'S tiniest holes have been "drilled" by engineers at Cardiff University. Researchers in the school's Manufacturing Engineering Center have developed machinery that can produce holes in stainless steel narrower than a human hair. The team has drilled holes as small as 22 microns; a human hair is between 50 and 80 microns in thickness. The process is called electrodischarge machining (EDM), and the holes are made with an ultrathin electrode with a diameter of just 6 microns. "The electrode is an electric discharge that wears away the metal, but it produces a very regular hole, which is tubular," says Frank Marsh, spokesman for the center. Near-nano-size holes will help engineers working in medical and computing engineering. "Engineers are trying to shrink the mechanical aspect of their products to catch up with the electronics, which have already been shrunk," Marsh says. -TG