Micro Electrochemical Milling of Micro Metal Parts with Rotating Ultrasonic Electrode

With the rapid development of MEMS, the demand for metal microstructure is increasing. Micro electrochemical milling technology (MECM) is capable of manufacturing micro metallic devices or components based on the principle of electrochemical anode dissolution. To improve the capacity of MECM, this paper presents a compound method named ultrasonic vibration-assisted micro electrochemical milling technology (UA-MECM). Firstly, the simulation and mathematical model of UA-MECM process is established to explain the mechanism of ultrasonic vibration on micro electrochemical milling. Then, the effects of ultrasonic parameters, electrical parameters and feedrate on machining localization and surface quality are discussed considering sets of experiments. The surface roughness was effectively reduced from Ra 0.83 to Ra 0.26 µm with the addition of ultrasonic vibration. It turns out that ultrasonic vibration can obviously improve machining precision, efficiency and quality. Finally, two- and three-dimensional microstructures with good surface quality were successful fabricated. It shows that ultrasonic vibration-assisted electrochemical milling technology has excellent machining performance, which has potential and broad industrial application prospects.