Study on laser-assisted dry micro-ground surface of difficult-to-cut materials

Abstract

The laser-assisted micromachining reduces the machining force, but it produces a rough surface due to the laser focusing workpiece surface. Hence, a laser-assisted dry micro-grinding is proposed by laser removing the cutting chip and sharpening the diamond wheel micro-tip. The objective is to explore the smooth dry micro-grinding for carbide alloy, quartz glass, and die steel. First, the laser-assisted micro-grinding was modeled with the Gaussian laser beam distributed on the interface of cutting chip and wheel micro-tip; then, the SD600 wheel micro-tip was employed to grind the 4–20-μm-depth microgrooves; finally, the micro-ground surfaces were investigated in connection with focusing position, wheel bond, laser variables, and grinding variables, respectively. It is shown that the laser focusing on chip may simultaneously remove the cutting chips and sharpen the wheel micro-tip for the micro-grinding without any burrs and cracks. It is dominated by workpiece melting point, wheel metal-bond, and chip height. For the laser fluence of 0.3–0.6 J/cm2, the surface roughness reaches 35, 73, and 95 nm for carbide alloy, die steel, and quartz glass, respectively. It is confirmed that the laser-assisted micro-grinding is very suitable for carbide alloy.