Processing Brittle Ultrahard Material and Glass with Polycrystalline Tools Using Electro-Discharge and Mechanical Machining System

Ultra-hard and brittle materials have drawn enormous attention as a master mold or itself in manufacturing flexible displays, IT-electronics-semiconductor devices and bio-diagnostic kits when they have holes, channels or other free forms whose dimensions are in micro- and nano-scale. Especially, in machining those hard and brittle ceramic into ultra-fine feature size under 100 μm, errors in size or shape can be occurred by run-out during tool-setting. In this research, we introduce a newly developed ultra-precision machining system with both electro-discharge and mechanical machining modules for brittle ceramic materials using PCD(polycrystalline diamond) and PCBN(polycrystalline boron nitride) tools and suggest optimized machining conditions using a machining signal analyzing system. Force and acoustic emission data were obtained and correlated with resulting morphologies on material surfaces.<br/><br/>Acknowledgement : This work was supported by the Technology Innovation Program (20010984, Development of multiple machining system technology integrated electro discharge and mechanical working for ultrahigh hard material and application machining technology using micro tool having size of 20 μm) funded By the Ministry of Trade, Industry & Energy(MOTIE, Korea) and by the Korea Institute of Machinery and Materials (NK238E).