In this study, micro-grinding was performed to investigate the machining characteristics of alumina and zirconia. The machining of ceramics remains highly challenging owing to their properties, such as high brittleness and wear resistance, which leads to a shorter tool life and high machining costs. Polycrystalline diamond (PCD) was selected as the tool material, as it is suitable for machining hard and brittle materials, and micro-electrical discharge machining (EDM) was used to fabricate PCD micro-tools. When using a resistor-capacitor generator circuit in micro-EDM, the discharging energy is related to the working capacitance, and by controlling the working capacitance, the different edge radii and the surface roughness of the tool can be easily achieved. The feed rate, depth of cut, and rotation speed were set as experimental parameters to investigate the grinding characteristics of the ceramics. During the experiment, the grinding force and roughness of the bottom surface were monitored, and the roughness of the machined surfaces was measured using a three-dimensional surface profiler. A working capacitance of 1000 pF was used to fabricate a tool with an edge radius of 3.5 µm. The lower radius of the tool edge resulted in a decrease of the cutting force by 50% at most and a surface roughness of 19 nm Ra.

Although glass is in high demand as a material for microfluidic chips, it is still difficult to fabricate microstructures on glass. In this paper, polycrystalline diamond tools were fabricated through electrical discharge machining, and the microgrinding process for fused silica using the tools was studied. In order to improve the productivity, the machining effects of the high feed rate and depth of cut on the surface roughness of the channel bottoms and edge chipping were studied. A toolpath for the microchannels of a microfluidic chip was also studied and a microfluidic chip array was fabricated using this method.

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