Ultrasonic vibration assisted grinding of hard and brittle linear micro-structured surfaces

Abstract

In this paper, a novel ultrasonic vibration assisted grinding (UVAG) technique was presented for machining hard and brittle linear micro-structured surfaces. The kinematics of the UVAG for micro-structures was first analyzed by considering both the vibration trace and the topological features on the machined surface. Then, the influences of the ultrasonic vibration parameters and the tilt angle on the ground quality of micro-structured surfaces were investigated. The experimental results indicate that the introduction of ultrasonic vibration is able to improve the surface quality (The roughness SRa was reduced to 78nm from 136nm), especially in guaranteeing the edge sharpness of micro-structures. By increasing the tilt angle, the surface roughness can be further reduced to 56nm for a 59% improvement in total. By using the preferred UVAG parameters realized by orthogonal experiments, a micro cylinder array with surface roughness of less than 50nm and edge radius of less than 1μm was fabricated. The primary and secondary sequence of the grinding parameters obtained by the orthogonal experiments are as follows: feed rate, tilt angle of workpiece, depth of grinding, vibration frequency and amplitude. The spindle speed in the range of 1000rpm–3000rpm does not significantly affect the machined micro-structured surface roughness. Finally, more micro-structures including a micro V-groove array and a micro pyramid array were machined on binderless WC as well as SiC ceramic by means of the UVAG technique. The edge radius on the V-grooves and pyramids are both less than 1μm, indicating the feasibility of UVAG in machining hard and brittle micro-structured surfaces for an improved surface quality.