Experimental Study on Ultrasonic Vibration-Assisted WECDM of Glass Microstructures with a High Aspect Ratio

Abstract

With the rapid development of micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMSs), the demand for glass microstructure is increasing. For the purpose of achieving high quality and stable machining of glass microstructures with a high aspect ratio, ultrasonic vibration is applied into the micro-wire electrochemical discharge machining (WECDM), which is proposed as ultrasonic vibration-assisted WECDM with a micro helical electrode. Firstly, the formation of a gas film on the surface of the helical electrode in WECDM machining is simulated, meaning the thickness of the gas film can be reduced by adding suitable ultrasonic amplitude, thus reducing the critical voltage, then the machining localization and stability were enhanced. Then, the micro helical electrode with a diameter of 100 μm is used to carry out sets of experiments that study the influence of ultrasonic amplitude, machining voltage, duty factor, pulse frequency, and feed rate on the slit width. The experimental results show that the machining stability and quality are significantly improved by adding suitable ultrasonic amplitude. When the amplitude was 5.25 μm, the average slit width was reduced to 128.63 μm with a decrease of 20.78%. Finally, with the optimized machining parameters, micro planar coil structure and microcantilever structure with a high aspect ratio were fabricated successfully on the glass plate. It is proved that ultrasonic vibration-assisted WECDM with the micro helical electrode method can meet the requirements of high aspect ratio microstructure machining for hard and brittle materials.

Improvement of the Machining Performance of the TW-ECDM Process Using Magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) on Quartz Material

“…If the potential difference is high enough for a given pair of electrodes, sparking is observed, where this spark causes a streamline of high-energy electrons that are transferred with exceptionally high speed toward the workpiece. This burst of electrons produces compressive shock waves on the surface of the workpiece, which results in removing the material via melting, vaporization, and thermal erosion [ 28 , 29 , 30 ].…”

Processing Optimization of Shear Thickening Fluid Assisted Micro-Ultrasonic Machining Method for Hemispherical Mold Based on Integrated CatBoost-GA Model

“…Chen et al combined electrochemical discharge processing with ultrasonic waves for processing the microstructure of glass plates, resulting in a gap reduction of more than 20% [ 13 ]. Zhao et al used ultrasonic-assisted machining when milling and machining the microstructures on the surface of aluminum plates, and this machining method significantly improved the machining quality of the surface of aluminum plates [ 14 ]. Wang et al greatly improved the shape accuracy of the workpiece surface by filing with ultrasonic processing of carbon fiber reinforced silicon carbide composites [ 15 ].…”

Investigation on Wire Electrochemical Discharge Micro-Machining

“…Liu et al [ 11 , 12 ] proposed the WECDM using a rotating helical tool for processing ultra-clear glass. Chen et al [ 13 ] enhanced the ability of WECDM for high aspect ratio glass structures by ultrasonic vibration. Kumar et al [ 14 ] studied the investigation of the effect of the governing process parameters on material removal rate and surface roughness during the WECDM of quartz.…”