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Efficient manufacture of dimensionally accurate optical surface on hard and brittle materials is a major concern for optoelectronic industry. Electrolytic in process dressing (ELID) grinding is proved as a reliable process to achieve this optical quality nano-surface finish on hard and brittle materials. Besides surface finish it is important to ensure dimensional accuracy by improving profile and form accuracy of the ground aspheric surface. Kinematic factors are commonly considered the reasons for the dimensional inaccuracy in a machined part. Software compensation is a direct and economical method to overcome several kinematic factors and improve the dimensional accuracy. Last, but most important, is the monitoring of achieved surface profile to ensure more accurate profile radius in the finished part. So an on-machine profile measurement system based on coordinate measuring machine (CMM) principle has been developed to check the profile radius of the ground surface. In this study software compensation was applied in ELID grinding of an aspheric surface in order to compensate the wheel wear until the measured surface profile machined on BK7 glass reaches within tolerable limit.

Demand for fabricating micro-features such as fine holes, micro-cavity for injection moulding, and micro-pin using both conventional (turning, milling, etc.) and non-conventional edge detection method (EDM), wire cut EDM, etc.) processes is increasing significantly. To successfully achieve micro-machining, development of a miniature machine tool, process technology, and on-machine measurement is essential. However, in such tool-based micro-machining processes, proper tool shape monitoring, precision processing, and dimensional control require significant attention. Since these are tool-based machining processes, tool shape monitoring and control are also important technologies to be established. In this study, an on-machine measuring device was developed based on non-contact optical method to inspect dimensions of the fabricated tools (e.g. electrodes for EDM) as well as the wear of tools used for the respective processes. The developed inspection system uses a laser light source and a photo-electronic device. To minimize errors due to the change of tool measurement position and the Fresnel diffraction of laser light, an edge detection algorithm using a linear discrimination function is proposed in this study. Furthermore, an intensity measuring method was added for specimen with a smaller diameter. The experimental results show that the developed on-machine optical inspection system has the accuracy and stability to effectively monitor the fine dimensions of tools and their wear.

In the ultra-precision diamond cutting process, the rake angle of the tool becomes negative because the edge radius of a tool is considerably larger compared to the sub-micrometer depth of the cut. The effects of plowing due to the large negative rake angle result in an unstable cutting process without continuous chip. For this reason, it is important to determine minimum cutting thickness in order to enable greater machining accuracy to be obtained by fine and stable machining. It was previously reported that the critical depth of cut with a continuous chip was determined by the tool sharpness and the friction coefficient between a workpiece and a tool [S.M. Son, et al., Effects of the friction coefficient on the minimum cutting thickness in micro cutting, International Journal of Machine Tools and Manufacture 45 (2005) 529–535]. For the same edge radius of a tool, the higher the friction coefficient of the tool–workpiece, the thinner the minimum cutting thickness becomes. Therefore, it is believed that increasing the friction coefficient by a physical method would be effective to achieve thinner stable cutting. In this study, the possibility of reducing the minimum cutting thickness was investigated through changing the friction coefficient of a tool–workpiece. The vibration cutting method is applied to increase the friction coefficient. Experimental results show that the cutting technology is efficient for increasing the friction coefficient and decreasing the minimum cutting thickness. The minimum cutting thickness was reduced by about 0.02–0.04 μm depending on materials and vibration conditions.

Micromachining is the basic technology of microengineering for the production of miniature components. One group of tool based micromachining technology is CNC microturning. It is a conventional material removal process that has been miniaturized. The objective of this study is to asses the machinability of brass, aluminium alloy and stainless steel during external cylindrical longitudinal microturning process for different workpiece–tool combinations. Experiments were carried out by varying the depth of cut, feed rate and spindle speed. One parameter was varied while the other two were kept constant in order to identify the best combination of cutting parameters. Machinability assessment was done by force analysis, chip analysis and tool wear criterion. Microshafts were fabricated with brass, aluminium alloy and stainless steel. Finally, microturning process was successfully applied to fabricate compound shaped micropins of diameter less than 0.5 mm.

Demands for high quality surface finish, dimensional and form accuracy are required for optical surfaces and it is very difficult to achieve these using conventional grinding methods. Electrolytic in-process dressing (ELID) grinding is one new and efficient method that uses a metal-bonded diamond grinding wheel in order to achieve a mirror surface finish especially on hard and brittle materials. However, studies reported so for have not explained the fundamental mechanism of ELID grinding and so it has been studied here by conducting experiments to establish optimal grinding parameters to obtain better surface finish under various in-process dressing conditions. In this research the results show that the cutting forces are unstable throughout the grinding process due to the breakage of an insulating layer formed on the surface of the grinding wheel; however, a smoother surface can be obtained using a high dressing current duty ratio at the cost of high tool wear. ELID grinding is efficient for feed rates of less than 400 mm/min, and surface cracks are observed when it exceeds this limit.