An experimental investigation on micro-milling of polymethyl methacrylate components with nanometric surface roughness

Abstract

Micro-optical components made from polymethyl methacrylate are increasingly in demand. This article presents an experimental investigation into diamond micro-milling of polymethyl methacrylate components with nanometric surface roughness and its application perspectives. The experimental micro-milling trials with a chemical vapour deposition diamond ball endmill are conducted on a self-developed ultra-precision micro-milling machine (UltraMill) featuring high precision and high dynamic performance. Surface roughness of micro-milled slots using different micro-milling strategies is measured with white light interferometer. Results show that when feed and cutting orientations are perpendicular, smaller surface roughness can be obtained. Micro-milling is carried out on 2 × 2 mm2 areas by applying different micro-milling strategies and process parameters. The results demonstrate that the micro-milling strategy which can generate good surface roughness in slot micro-milling cannot produce expected surface roughness on such a large area (2 × 2 mm2), and machining dynamics plays an important role. By applying two-way joint micro-milling strategy and adjusting process parameters, an optical surface is obtained with roughness of 8.717 nm.

Characterization of the material-induced elastic–plastic deformations in ultra-precision diamond cutting

“…Ultra-precision cutting technologies generally refer to the single-point diamond turning (SPDT) [1,2], micro-milling [3], and fly cutting/ultra-precision raster milling (UPRM) as well as micro-grooving/ruling. Ultra-precision cutting (UPC) technology can directly achieve high-quality freeform surfaces and now becomes one of the popular and feasible manufacture technologies for the machining of different functional components with sophisticated geometrical features and high-quality requirement.…”

Fabrication of copper substrates for surface-enhanced Raman scattering using the microscratching method

“…9 Therefore, the micro/nano mechanical machining method is employed by some scholars, which owns the high machining efficiency and is controllable to fabricate complex twoand three-dimensional micro/nano structures. [10][11][12][13] For example, the polymethyl methacrylate was machined with nanometric surface roughness by the micro-milling method. 10 This approach can machine complex microstructures on many workpiece materials.…”

“…[10][11][12][13] For example, the polymethyl methacrylate was machined with nanometric surface roughness by the micro-milling method. 10 This approach can machine complex microstructures on many workpiece materials. 11 The diamond tool flycutting is a good method to achieve the ultrasmooth surface which can also be used to machine microstructures.…”

Characterization study on machining PMMA thin‐film using AFM tip‐based dynamic plowing lithography

“…Besides, polymer film with nanostructure can be used as a mask in reactive ion etching (Yan et al ., ) and wet etching processes (Klehn and Kunze, ). Thus, how to create nanostructure on the polymer film is worth to be investigated (Jiao and Cheng, ). Several scholars have studied the effects of the parameters of the DPL process, such as drive amplitude, set‐point amplitude, scratching velocity, and thermal‐annealing treatment on the machining outcomes (Heyde et al ., ; Lu et al ., ; Yan et al ., ).…”