FABRICATION OF DISC SHAPED MICROTOOL BY ELECTROCHEMICAL MICROMACHINING FOR MICROMACHINING APPLICATIONS

Electrochemical micromachining (EMM) is widely used for micromachining applications due to its various benefits over other micromachining methods. Microtool is the vital element in EMM, since the features of the microtool like shape, size and surface finish are directly transferred to the work surfaces affecting its machining accuracy and surface quality. Disc shaped microtools are useful to improve the machining accuracy in terms of reduced overcut, taper angle and stray current effects in EMM. Disc microtools fabricated by different machining techniques needs separate machine setup and includes microtool handling, increasing the risk of microtool damage. This paper presents the micro machining techniques to fabricate the disc shaped microtools of different shank diameters, disc diameters and different disc heights with improved surface quality as required for micromachining applications, from tungsten microrod by EMM. Finally, disc shaped microtool of disc �175 µm, disc height 70 µm and shank �93 µm was fabricated from tungsten microrod of �300 µm and used to machine the micro features like straight cylindrical microhole, straight walled microgroove and 3D micro structures on stainless steel by EMM. Keyword: Electrochemical micromachining, Disc shape microtool, shank diameter, disc diameter, disc height.