Drilling of Rod End Faces Using Micro-Cutting Tools

There have been few reports on the drilling of microholes on rod end faces by cutting, which can be employed for fabricating micronozzles or microneedles. Such drilling was therefore attempted in the present study using a micro turn-milling machine with the tool and workpiece axes being parallel. The drilling was performed on the end faces of brass rods with cemented tungsten carbide micro-cutting tools processed by electrical discharge machining (EDM). As a result, a microhole 12‍ μm in diameter was successfully drilled using a 10-μm-diameter tool at a feed speed of 0.5‍ μm/s. The feed speed could be increased to 25 μm/s for a tool with a diameter of 20 μm and body length of 50 μm.