Micro-milling microstructures in air-shielding ultrasonic assisted electrochemical machining

Abstract

With the developments of technologies, the demand for small parts increases rapidly in many fields, especially when metal microstructure is essential in some small parts. Therefore, it has become an urgent problem in the field of micro-manufacturing to develop micro-machining methods with certain 3D processing capability at the micro/nano scale. Electrochemical micromachining is a promising method in microstructure processing, for its advantages of high precision and disregarding material strength during processing. However, the serious stray corrosion and low machining efficiency limit the development of electrochemical micromachining. To solve these problems, this study adopts and proposes the air-shielding ultrasonic assisted electrochemical micro-milling (AUA-EMM), in which the ultrasonic and gas fields are added. Firstly, the feasibility of this method is proved by the comparative experiments under different processing conditions. Then the influences of different parameters in AUA-EMM on material removal rate (MRR) and bottom roughness are explored through processing experiments. And the complex microstructures with sharp edges and high precision are eventually fabricated by AUA-EMM. The minimum island with size of 130 × 130 μm and the surface roughness (Ra) of 154 nm could be obtained. The results show that AUA-EMM has the ability to fabricate the complex microstructures with high precision and efficiency.