Investigation on micromilling of through microslots on titanium by electrochemical micromachining

Abstract

Titanium (Ti) possesses best strength-to-weight ratio and corrosion resistance and exceptional biocompatibility. Therefore, they are very attractive for microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) and biomedical uses. Electrochemical micromachining (EMM) technique could be possible alternative for machining of titanium especially in micro domain. The work elaborated in this paper demonstrated successful fabrication of microslots on commercially pure titanium by electrochemical micromilling utilising EMM process. This study also investigated influence of various EMM process parameters such as machining voltage, pulse frequency, duty ratio and microtool feed rate to establish most suitable EMM process parameters for enhancement of machining accuracy of microslots. From the established parameters width overcut of microslot has been reduced from 126 µm to 32 µm as well as degree of taper is also improved from 8° to 0.7°. This work also demonstrated successful fabrication of micro cantilevers of 126 µm and 119 µm widths with total length of 875 µm and 861 µm respectively. The outcomes of this experimentation can be effectively utilised for generation of various micro features on pure commercial titanium intended for MEMS and biomedical applications.