Study on electrorheological fluid-assisted microultrasonic machining

Ultrasonic Machining (USM) is an effective machining method for machining hard and brittle materials. In this method, materials are removed by the impacts of abrasive grains that are pressurised by an ultrasonic vibrating tool. The purpose of this research is to make precise microholes on hard and brittle materials by using USM. However, chippings which are generally observed around the edge of machined microholes decrease the machining precision. In this paper, generation mechanism of chippings is investigated and Electrorheological fluid (ER fluid)-assisted USM is proposed as a method for restraining chippings. As a result effectiveness of the ER fluid-assisted USM is confirmed practically by machining precise microholes on some hard and brittle materials.