Research on surface generation and forces in ultra-small-grinding (USG) of titanium.

In micro grinding, the size of the micro grinding tool largely determines the minimum size of the microstructures that can be machined. However, most researches about micro grinding use grinding tools with a diameter more than 300 μm. In this study, the grinding properties of titanium in ultra-small-grinding (USG) on no more than 100 μm scale were investigated. A grinding force model considering the effects of micro scale and abrasive grain size was proposed. Corresponding experiments were conducted with self-prepared USG tools with diameters 100 μm. Electroplating technology was used to fix abrasive grains to prepare the USG tools, and the electrochemistry preparation processing of the USG tool was revealed. The effectiveness of the grinding force model was proved by the experimental results. The influences of grinding parameters on the surface and grinding forces were studied. The grinding force on the x-axis is the largest in three directions, which decreases with the increasing of rotation speed and increases with the increasing of feeding velocity. The material removal ability of up grinding is better than that of down grinding in USG. As the feeding velocity increases and rotation speed decreases, surface defects increase. There is much individual sheet-like material melted and adhered to up grinding surface, and the straight serrated contour line is prone to be produced by up grinding. And there is much fish scale like material fusion layer deposits on down grinding surface, and the inclined wavy contour line is prone to be produced by down grinding. After USG, the oxygen element content on the grinding surface increases by more than 10 % due to grinding heat. • Grinding performance of the small grinding tool with diameter 100 μm was studied. • The effects of micro scale and grain size were considered in modeling. • Small grinding tool with diameter 100 μm was prepared by electrochemistry method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]