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Ultrasonic machining is a contemporary manufacturing method usually employed for processing materials with higher hardness/brittleness such as quartz, semiconductor materials, ceramics etc. The machined surface produced by ultrasonic machining is found to be free from any surface defects (heat affected zone, cracks, recast layer, etc.) in contrast to the thermal based machining processes like; electric discharge machining, laser beam machining etc. In this article, a review has been reported on the fundamental principle of ultrasonic machining, effect of operating parameters on material removal rate, tool wear rate, surface roughness and hole quality. It also presents a brief review on micro-USM, rotary USM and hybrid methods with other processes.

WC-Co composite materials possess a vast range of industrial applications owing to their excellent properties such as superior hardness, toughness and dimensional stability. Present article has been targeted at investigating the impact of different experimental conditions (power rating, cobalt content, tool material, thickness of work piece, tool geometry, and abrasive grit size) on penetration rate in ultrasonic drilling of WC-Co composite material. Taguchi’s L-36 orthogonal array has been employed for conducting the experiments. Significant factors have been identified using analysis of variance (ANOVA) test. The experimental results revealed that power rating, abrasive grit size, and tool profile is most significant factor for penetration rate. From the microstructure analysis, the modes of material deformation have been observed and the parameters (i.e. work material properties, grit size, and power rating) were observed as the most crucial for the deformation mode.

Knowing temperatures at the tool-chip interface is extremely important to optimize the machining condition and to improve the machining performance, furthermore to design high performance materials. In order to grasp the temperature distribution at the tool-chip interface, this study has devised an indexable insert with seven pairs of built-in micro Cu/Ni thermocouples on the rake face near the cutting edge. This paper shows the performance of the indexable insert with built-in micro thermocouples developed. The thickness of each element of the micro thermocouple is approximately 15 μm. The result of unsteady heat conduction analysis employing FEM shows that the temperature difference by installing the micro thermocouples is less than 10 K or 1.2 %. The temperature measurement experiments by cutting of aluminum alloy were carried out by changing the cutting speed. The results provided the evidence that the temperature distribution at the tool-chip interface can be grasped with the indexable insert with built-in micro thermocouples developed.

High volume fraction SiCp/Al composites were grinded in rotary ultrasonic vibration aided grinding in this experiment, exploring the effects of different grinding parameters (grinding depth, grinding wheel speed, feed rate) on grinding force and the material removal mechanism with ultrasonic grinding. The results showed that grinding force of ultrasonic grinding is lower than the ordinary grinding in the same grinding parameters. Studying on material removal mechanism of ultrasonic vibration grinding is bound to have important theoretical and practical significance for the improvement of grinding processes and the development of mechanical according to the advantages of grinding and ultrasonic machining. Keywords: High volume fraction SiCp/Al composites; ultrasonic grinding; grinding force

Ultrasonic machining is an important part of modern processing technology which is adapt to all kinds of hard brittle materials processing. This paper reviews the latest progress of the material removal mechanism on one-dimensional ultrasonic machining, two-dimensional ultrasonic machining and rotary ultrasonic machining, and expounds the development trend of establishing the material removal model of the ultrasonic machining.

The material removal in ultrasonic machining (USM) is based on brittle fracturing of workpiece materials. The properties and fracture behavior are different for varied materials, and they would have an influence on the machining performance of USM. The smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) method was used to simulate the USM process for different workpiece materials. Three typical hard and brittle materials, i.e. silicon carbide (SiC), alumina (Al2O3), and glass will be used as the workpiece materials. Experiments are also conducted for comparing with the simulation results. Through this study, the material fracturing processes for different work materials are shown visually using the SPH method, which is very useful for USM study.

There are a number of problems with the traditional way of machining Nomex composite materials, Ultrasonic vibration cutting as a new method can overcome most of the problems. This paper presents the machining process characteristics of ultrasonic cutting honeycomb structures of Nomex composite materials using two kinds of specials tools, and has a research on Ultrasonic machining tools posture control strategy, then proposed calculation method of generating the cutter location date. The main system was developed to meet the automatic generation cutting path of Nomex composite materials based on VS2008 and UG commercial software. The result of experiment shows this system can automatic generate rational machining path and correct NC date.

Ultrasonic vibration cutting can be widely used in lathe, planer, milling machine, grinding machine, thread processing and gear processing, etc. Ultrasonic vibration cutting system is composed mainly of ultrasonic generator, ultrasonic transducer, luffing rod, cutting tool, etc. Here, ultrasonic generator is the most important. The stand or fall of signal, which is produced by ultrasonic generator, has direct influence on anticipated effect and ability of ultrasonic machining. In order to generate a signal, which can be suitable for ultrasonic machining, ultrasonic vibration cutting system is studied, and ultrasonic signal generator based on direct digital frequency synthesis (DDS) is designed and conducted a cutting test with this ultrasonic machining system. The results show that the signal generator, which is made up by DDS technology, can generate the signal with stability, reliability and greater flexibility, and can be fully applicable to the ultrasonic machining.

In this Research, Taguchi optimization methodology is used to optimize Rotary Ultrasonic Machining (RUM) parameters for face milling of zirconia ceramic. The influence of the RUM parameters such as vibration frequency, vibration amplitude, spindle speed, feed rate, and depth of cut on cutting force and material removal rate (MRR) is studied. A three-level orthogonal array table is used to determine the signal-to-noise (S/N) ratios based on Taguchis design of experiments. Furthermore, analysis of variance (ANOVA) has been performed to study the relative significance of the different factors on cutting force and MRR of zirconia ceramic. Finally, verification tests were carried out to compare the predicted values of the outputs with their experimental values in order to confirm the effectiveness of the Taguchi Optimization.

The acoustic horn plays a very vital part in high energy ultrasonic machining, and its design is critical to the quality and the efficiency of ultrasonic machining. This paper performs the analysis and design of acoustic horns for ultrasonic welding Teflon encapsulated O-ring by employing ANSYS finite element software. Firstly, the theoretical dimensions of the horns are calculated. Moreover, their natural frequencies and amplitudes are obtained through the simulations of ANSYS.

The chatter caused by the inner factors of the machining system in the ultrasonic honing process would seriously affect the surface quality of combustion engine. A dynamical model of ultrasonic honing chatter system was established, which involved with ultrasonic honing mechanism and dynamic honing depth, the relationship between the limit honing width and honing speed was deduced based on the theory of regenerative chatter; the simulation was carried out to obtain the effect of different parameters including stiffness coefficient, damping ratio, spindle speed and reciprocation motion speed on the stability limit curve of the chatter system. It can be concluded that the ultrasonic honing chatter system have better stability with low spindle speed, high stiffness and damping ratio, which providing foundation to eliminate ultrasonic honing system chatter in the precision machining of cylinder liner.

Ultrasonic vibration machining is a kind of effective method for precision processing of brittle-hard materials, especially it can obtain good surface quality in engine cylinder liner precision processing with the power ultrasonic honing. Based on the material removal mechanism of ultrasonic honing, a new ultrasonic honing force model was established, which included material chip deformation and friction situation between grains and workpiece. Therefore the effect to honing force can be known clearly with processing parameters and material physical change, which provided theory foundation to further study in ultrasonic mechanism and real time surface quality protection in honing process.

Aiming at amplitude decay with the change of the varying conditions problems in ultrasonic honing processing, this paper puts forward to the frequency of ultrasonic machining testing solutions. By measuring the change of the input current transducer, adjust the ultrasonic generator power output, and ensure that the ultrasonic generator adjust the output power according to load. Finally, stable amplitude, make the whole system in a resonant state, the amplitude of the oil-stone keep near biggest amplitude. This paper designed circuit measuring the current which can feedback current changes effectively, to provide the safeguard for adjusting the ultrasonic generator output power.

In view of inaccuracy of the traditional design method of acoustic horns with milling tool, by using the cubic spline curve as the generatrix of the axis cross-section of the horn with finite element analysis, this paper designs a kind of new ultrasonic horn not only meet the Material Allowable working stress conditions, but also has a good shape factor and larger amplification factor. In addition, the impact of the length of milling tool on the amplification factor and resonance length of the horns and are discussed.

Particle reinforced aluminium matrix composites could be used in manufacturing of aviation thin-walled workpiece due to its excellent performances, but it is hard to be manufactured. Rotary ultrasonic machining (RUM) is very suitable for machining particle reinforced aluminum matrix composites with moderate or high volume fraction. Chatter appears very easily in machining process of thin-walled workpiece and it can seriously reduce the quality of components. Based on the dynamic characteristics of machining process, a stability analytical model is built. It is analyzed that the process stability of a thin-walled workpiece of SiCp/Al composites reinforced with 45% volume fraction, and the stability lobe diagram is plotted by using MATLAB. According to stability analysis results, a machining experiment is conducted and the test results indicate chatter could be prevented effectively by this method.

Based on similarity principle, cutting modes of turning, milling, grinding etc are equivalent to three load forms of dot, line and face. And three different loads of dot, line and face are applied on the nano-ZrO2 workpiece by three different indenter models of dot, line and face. To one-dimensional ultrasonic vibration system, the influence is studied which is of different load forms and different load magnitudes on acoustic system characteristics of ultrasonic machining. The experimental results show that, the change of loads has little influence on the acoustic system parameters of ultrasonic machining when the load modes on the nano-ZrO2 workpiece are dot and line. And when the load mode is surface contact, the change of loads has significant influence on the acoustic system parameters of ultrasonic machining.

The amplitude transformer is widely applied in ultrasonic machining because it can magnify the amplitude between the ultrasonic transducer and the tool. This paper explained the experimental device of the ultrasonic vibration system, the design principles of the amplitude transformer and the design process of the conical transformer. At last, it gave the engineering drawing of the amplitude transformer.

The ultrasonic processing to sometimes also call that a Ultrasonic machining, it can not only processing cemented carbide, hardened steel, and other hard-brittle metal materials, and better Co-processing in glass, ceramics, germanium semiconductor, marble, a non-conducting silicon, and other hard-brittle non-metallic materials, but also can be used in cleaning, welding, testing, measurement, metallurgy and other aspects of this paper to study the principles of ultrasonic processing and The application of ultrasound to explore Development, the modern processing technology of the latest trends.

Rotary ultrasonic machining is a hybrid machining process that combines diamond grinding and ultrasonic machining. The mathematical predictive material removal rate models have been developed in rotary ultrasonic machining with a constant pressure. However, there is no report on mathematical predictive cutting force model in rotary ultrasonic drilling at a constant feedrate presently. Since cutting force can not only reflect the processing state, but also affect the machined surface quality, it is necessary to develop a mathematical model for predicting cutting force which can forecast the machining results. This paper presents a mathematical model to predict the cutting force in rotary ultrasonic machining. On the basis of this model, the relations between cutting force and controllable machining parameters are researched by numerical computation method. This paper also researches the influences of spindle speed and feedrate on cutting force by experiments. The results observed through the experiments agree well with the relations generated from the mathematical model, which verify the developed model.

This study discussed what rotary ultrasonic machining (RUM) and tool geometry parameters combination can obtain bigger material removal rate (MRR) in drilling. The experimental configuration of this study was planned using Taguchi orthogonal array, where the drill diameter, rotation speed, power and feed rate were taken as the experimental factors. A relation model among the MRR and standard deviation of the holes walls and processing parameters and tool geometry was established, so as to achieve maximum MRR of the overall deep holes walls. The experimental results proved that application of the optimized parameters combination in rotary ultrasonic machining of holes processing can obtain bigger and better removal rate of holes walls. The effect of control factors on the holes quality was discussed from the straightness deviation and maximum material removal rate of related factors on the holes when the Taguchi method was used in rotary ultrasonic machining of holes drilling. The results showed that rotation speed, power, and feed rate under bigger level have a larger MRR than that of other level in a fixed drill diameter.

Ultrasonic gear honing is a kind of precision processing technology with great application prospect. The gear is a special kind of load in ultrasonic machining, and its vibration characteristic and natural frequency has great influence on processing frequency of the system. According to the structure characteristic of the gear with stepped variable thickness, its equations of axisymmetric bending vibration frequency were derived on the basis of the thick plate theory in this paper, and then the gear’s natural frequency is obtained which is in accordance with the results of FEM computation. Besides, the main factors affecting the calculation accuracy are analyzed with some examples in this paper The analysis shows that within the application range of Mindlin’s plate theory, the gears’ frequency obtained by the suggested method is accurate.

To explore the impact of abrasive granularity, feed pressure and cutting feed speed on NC ultrasonic machining efficiency, a technological test was carried out, and based on the test results, back propagation (BP) neural network model was established and validated by simulation. The validation process showed that when relative error is less than ±10%, only two samples among 18 tested have larger errors. By the utilization of the BP network for training, correct fitting rate of machining efficiency target can be reached up to 88.9%. Our study indicates that (i) the output of the network is well fitted with the test data, (ii) the established model has good generalization ability to reflect the laws of NC ultrasonic machining process, and (iii) the model is suitable as a prediction tool for NC ultrasonic machining efficiency.

Rotary ultrasonic machining process, regarded as one of the effective processing methods for hard-brittle materials, is introduced into drilling K9 glass in this paper. The effective cutting velocity, cutting depth, and cutting length of single diamond particle are determined by analyzing the kinematics characteristic of diamond tool in rotary ultrasonic drilling (RUD). Experiments are conducted to study the influences of process variables (spindle speed, feedrate) on cutting force, chipping size, and surface roughness in RUD. As comparison study, the processing performances between RUD and diamond drilling are also discussed. The experimental results show that the RUD process can significantly reduce cutting force and the value of chippings size, which inferred that RUD process can improve machining efficiency and make the machining cost lower. It is also concluded that the effective cutting depth of diamond particles is the main factor for surface roughness in RUD of K9 glass.

In this paper, five kinds of power ultrasonic transducers with different section plane positions are designed and the shapes of the transducers are straight. The different section plane position changes with the length l2 of front cover. That is to say, the longer l2 is, the more front the position of the section is. The experiment indicates the great influence of the section plane position on the transducer performance.With the increase of the length of the front cover, the dynamic resistance reduces gradually, and the resonance frequency and the anti-resonance frequency also reduce. Under this condition, the anti-resonance frequency declines more sharply, and the mechanical quality factor increases gradually, but the effective mechanical and electrical coupling coefficient reduces gradually. The transducer has different measure targets in different situations. Therefore, different parameters may be primordially considered to be designed according to the actual use of the transducer in this paper. This provides the reference for manufacture and use of transducers.

Two sets of power ultrasonic transducer applied to ultrasonic machining are designed in this paper, whose surface location, the number of piezoelectric ceramics is identical. By changing the parameters of the quarter wavelength horn which connects with the power ultrasonic transducer, the transducer changes of performance parameters are compared. The influence of the performance of different structural power ultrasonic transducer on its front cover is studied.

Because of the high hardness and high brittleness of ceramics, crack damage would be easy left in the finished surface. This will lower the reliability of ceramics parts. Studies show that Ultrasonic vibration Added Grinding (UAG) can greatly improve the surface quality, but how UAG to reduce the surface/subsurface damage isn’t very clear. To this purpose, the surface/subsurface crack mechanism of the ultrasonic vibration added grinding on ceramics was mainly analyzed in this article. The study shows that ultrasonic vibration can change the crack propagation direction to free surface, rather than propagate to the deep material which will happen in conventional grinding. And this will reduce the surface/subsurface crack defects.

In this paper Finite Element Methods (FEM) were used to simulate the ultrasonic vibration Orthogonal cutting of titanium alloy Ti6Al4V. Machining conditions were similar to those used for manufacture. Material constitutive applied Johnson-Cook model combining elastic and plastic deformation, the material hardening for extreme shear strain and strain rate, material softening for adiabatic shear of chip flow-zone. Chip separated criteria adopted arbitrary Lagrangian Euler algorithm (ALE). Heat sources included the rake face chip flow under conditions of seizure and chip/tool friction, clearance face tool/workpiece friction. Thus, the orthogonal ultrasonic vibration machining of Ti6Al4V FEM models were established. The simulation results included the chip formation, the cutting force/stress and temperature distributions through the primary shear zone and the chip/tool contact region. The cutting force, cutting temperature of the ultrasonically and conventionally machining were compared. The reasons of the decrease of chip deformation coefficients, cutting force and temperature and the increase of shear angle in ultrasonic machining were discussed.

Lower machining efficiency of traditional lapping with free abrasive restricts the enhancement of the precision parts’ production efficiency. It is necessary to improve lapping efficiency on the premise of guarantee of lapping quality. In this paper, a new ultrasonic aided lapping technology was developed by combining lapping technology and ultrasonic machining technology and a series of lapping experiments of ZTA engineering ceramic with and without ultrasonic assistance were carried out. The results of theoretical analysis and experimental study show that it is the ultrasonic assistance of the lapping tool that promotes the enhancement of lapping efficiency and the ultrasonic aided lapping technique with fixed abrasive can be regarded as a high efficiency processing method of the precision engineering ceramic part.

A micro-grooving method by ultrasonic machining with a lamination tool has been devised. Thin walls on the tip of an ultrasonic tool can fabricate many grooves on a workpiece by one ultrasonic-machining process. Thinner wall for fabricating micro grooves, however, poses the lack of the stiffness of the tool, resulting in the difficulty of the grooving. Then the walls are enfolded with a soft material such as a polymer plastic to supplement the lack of the stiffness. Since soft material absorbs the energy of the ultrasonic vibration, the damage by the impacts of the abrasive particle on the workpiece surface under the soft material is little. Therefore multiple micro-grooves can fabricate efficiently by using of a lamination tool in which thin hard-materials and thin soft-materials are laminated alternately. In this paper, the lamination tools were developed with a thin shim-sheet as the hard material and an epoxy adhesive as the soft material. The fabrication experiments of the parallel grooves on alumina ceramics were conducted. This paper investigates the influences of the parameters of ultrasonic machining such as the grain size of the abrasive particle, the static machining load or static normal stress applied to the tool-workpiece contact region and the grooving time upon the characteristics of the micro-grooves. The results show that the grooving efficiency depends on the grooving time and the static normal stress. Finally, some applications are shown.

Micro ultrasonic machining (micro-USM) is an effective machining method for hard brittle materials. In the micro-USM process, the workpiece materials are machined through the accumulation of small brittle fractures generated by the impacts of abrasive grains. Therefore, it becomes difficult to obtain a smooth machined surface. In the proposed electrorheological fluid-assisted ultrasonic machining (ER fluid-assisted USM), the behavior of abrasive grains is controlled using the effect of dielectrophoretic force acting on the abrasive grains and the ER effect. The behavior of the abrasive grains can be controlled by changing the electric field distribution. In the present paper, the shape and position of the auxiliary electrode are arranged in order to control the abrasive grains to the side surface of the micro rectangular tool. By positioning the auxiliary electrode parallel to the micro rectangular tool, it becomes possible to concentrate abrasive grains to the side surface of the micro rectangular tool. Smoothing of the side surface of the workpiece by using the side surface of the micro rectangular tool is then investigated. As a result, the surface roughness of the side surface of the workpiece can be improved.

Ultrasonic machining (USM) is an effective machining method for hard brittle materials. In the USM process, the slurry is supplied to the gap between the ultrasonic vibrating tool and the workpiece. Materials are removed by the accumulation of small brittle fractures made by the impacts of abrasive grains. In a previous study, we proposed electrorheological fluid (ER fluid) assisted-USM, and the effect of ER fluid-assisted USM was confirmed practically by machining precise micro-holes and micro-grooves on hard brittle materials. In the present paper, in order to confirm the effect of ER fluid assistance for micro USM in more detail, the behavior of abrasive grains in the machining area is observed. The effect of dielectrophoretic force acts on the abrasive grains and the effect of using ER fluid assistance are investigated. As a result, the abrasive grains can closely approach the micro tool by the effect of dielectrophoretic force and be fixed around the micro tool by the effect of ER fluid assistance. Under these conditions, the workpiece is removed primarily by the accumulation of small brittle fractures, and the chipping can be reduced.

Grinding fluid has an important effect in processing work piece, so in view of the new grinding fluid, a large number of tests have been taken in the application of the power ultrasonic vibration honing. The massive experimental study, separated from the work piece’s surface roughness, the work piece’s surface rubbed deterioration layer and the influence to the processing characteristic with different density of the new grinding fluid and so on, discussed the adaptability of the new grinding fluid in power ultrasonic vibration honing processing. The research has been indicated that although the new grinding fluid does not surpass the traditional working fluid, such as emulsion and liquor, in cooling performance, it has a better lubricating property and has the obvious superiority in the working accuracy and the oilstone’s length of life. Therefore the new self-developed grinding fluid is suitable for the power ultrasonic honing processing.

The influence of ultrasonic vibration on the surface roughness and micro-topography of ceramics plate is discussed in this paper. Grinding assisted by two-dimensional ultrasonic vibration is developed to deal with the processing difficulty of ceramic materials due to its hard-brittle property. The experimental results show that the surface roughness value obtained in two-dimensional ultrasonic grinding nano-ZrO2 ceramic plate specimen is obviously smaller than that in common grinding, and the scratched grooves on the machined surface in ultrasonic grinding is wider and relatively smoother than that in common grinding. Consequently, it proves that the two-dimensional ultrasonic machining is a feasible, high-efficient machining method for hard-brittle materials.

Sintered NdFeB permanent magnet is widely used because of its excellent magnet property. But there is few report of machinbility of it. This paper presents an experimental investigation of the machining characteristics of sintered NdFeB permanent magnet using a combination process of electro-discharge machining (EDM) with ultrasonic machining (USM). The EDM / USM machining mechanisms are integrated to improve the machining efficiency. During the experiments, concentration of abrasive in the dielectric fluid is changed to explore its effect on the material removal rate (MRR). MRR of EDM /USM, conventional EDM and tool vibration aided EDM are compared, REWR and machined surface characteristics are also compared between them. From the experimental results, it is concluded that the combination EDM/USM process can increase the MRR and decrease the thickness of the recast layer. In the combination process, an appropriate abrasive concentration can improve its machining efficiency.

The influence of whisker orientation on machining mechanism, material removal rate and roughness of finished surface when machining the hydroxyapatite /SiCw composite bioceramics material using ultrasonic machining technology was studied. The research results show that material removal rate and roughness of finished surface increase with the increase of the direction angle θ . Under the same machining condition, the higher is the fracture toughness of the material, the lower the material removal rate is. This provides basis for the ultrasonic machining of hydroxyapatite /SiCw composite bioceramics material.