Design of a novel fixed abrasive petal-shaped lapping tool and material removal uniformity experiments on K9 glass

Abstract

A novel fixed abrasive petal-shaped lapping tool is proposed to achieve the material removal uniformity based on finite element method (FEM) and mathematical analysis. The cross-sectional profile of the petal-shaped lapping tool is revealed according to the numerical analysis based on the in-plane stress distribution of disk elastomer tools in contact with the workpiece, which is shown and analyzed for the first time. Then, the practical experiments are carried out on the K9 glass plane workpieces to study the characteristic of the surface quality evolution and the material removal uniformity. Results show that the increasing material removal amounts along the radius are all suppressed under different experimental conditions, where the coefficients of variations of the two experimental groups with the better results are as low as 0.077 and 0.085, respectively. Moreover, the surface roughness Sa and Ra along the radial direction after lapping reach as low as 142 nm and 30 nm for the optical glass, achieving a drastic improvement of 77.2 % and 88.8 %. Thus, the design strategy of lapping tool with special structure will explore a new path of fabricating more specific tools in the field of ultraprecision manufacturing.