V-Shaped Microgrooving with Two Flat-Ends by 6-axis Control Machining

Abstract

In recent years, attention is paid to diffractive optics which have surface appearance like diffraction grating or Fresnel lens. A variety of machining methods are requested to effectively produce metal mold of diffractive optics, consisting of a number of microgrooves with various shapes. One of them is flat-end microgrooves. Flat-end microgrooves mean microgrooves having no slope at the end. The existence of the slope limits the design of microgrooves and causes unnecessary diffraction lights and losses. Thus, the slope is requested to remove. The study deals with the creation of V-shaped microgrooves with two flat-ends by using 6-axis controll non-rotational cutting tools, that is, curved microgrooves with two flat-ends are created on a curved surface. The proposed method shows the effectiveness to create flat-end curved microgrooves on curved surfaces as well as the method of cutting edge detection to set a cutting edge symply and accurately.