Modern Mechan ical Engineering, 2014, 4, 1-7
Published Online February 2014 (http://www.scirp.org/journal/mme)
http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/mme.2014.41001
OPEN ACCESS MME
Understanding of Ultrasonic Assisted Machining with
Diamond Grinding Tool
Kyung-Hee Park1, Yun-Hyuck Hong2, Kyeong-Tae Kim3, Seok-Wo o Lee3,
Hon-Zong Choi2, Young-Jae Choi2
1Korea Institute on Industrial Technology, Future Manufacturing System R&D Group,
Manufacturing System R&D Department, Cheonan-si, South Korea
2Korea Institute on Industrial Technology, IT Converged Process R&D Group,
Convergent Technology R&D Department, Ansan-si, South Korea
3Korea Institute on Industrial Technology, Chungcheong Regional Division, Cheonan-si, South Korea
Email: kpa rk@kitech.re.kr, secar@kitech.re.kr, kimkt@kitech.re.kr, swlee@kitech.re.kr,
choihz@kitech.re.kr, youngjae@kitech.re.kr
Received November 8, 2013; revised December 11, 2013; accepted December 23, 2013
Copyright © 2014 Kyung-Hee Park et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License,
which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. In accor-
dance of the Creative Commons Attribution License all Copyrights © 2014 are reserved for SCIRP and the owner of the intellectual
property Kyung-Hee Park et al. All Copyright © 2014 are guarded by law and by SCIRP as a guardian.
ABSTRACT
In this work, machining test was carried out in various machining conditions using ultrasonic vibration capable
CNC machine. For work material, alumina ceramic (Al2O3) was used while for tool material diamond electrop-
lated grinding wheel was used. To evaluate ultrasonic vibration effect, grinding test was performed with and
without ultrasonic vibration in same machining condition. In ultrasonic mode, ultrasonic vibration of 20 kHz
was generated by HSK 63 ultrasonic actuator. On the other hand, grinding forces were measured by KISTLER
dynamometer. And an optimal sampling rate for grinding force measurement was obtained by a signal proces-
sing and frequency analysis. The surface roughness of the ceramic was also measured by using stylus type sur-
face roughness instrument and atomic force microscop e (AF M). Besides , the scanning electron microscope (SEM)
was used for observation of surface integrality.
KEYWORDS
Ultrasonic Vibration; Grinding; Alumina Ceramic; Grinding Forces; Surface Roughness
1. Introduction
Ceramics have been considered as one of the important
materials in engineering application due to its outstand-
ing physical and mechanical prop erties such as high melt-
ing temperature, high wear resistant, etc . [1-3]. However,
there are some difficulties in machining of the ceramic
materials owing to its hard and brittle nature on top of
bad uniformity and low reliability, so the ceramics are
classified into ha rd-to-cut materials [4,5]. For this reason,
ultrasonic assisted machining, which is a hybrid process
that combines the material removal mechanism and ul-
trasonic vibration, has been considered. This process can
be useful for ceramic machining because an additional
axial ultrasonic vibration can lead to reduction in cutting
temperature and tool wear while maintaining high sur-
face quality, which cannot be obtained from conventional
machining [6-10]. Therefore, ultrasonic assisted machin-
ing has been applied for machining of the ceramics as an
alternative method to traditional machining [9]. Several
studies have been performed for machining of hard and
brittle materials using ultr asonic vibration, which applied
to either work mater ial or a cutting spindle [2,6,7]. From
the literature, it was found that better surface roughness
and fracture strength were obtained. In addition, the cut-
ting forces and tool wear were also reduced with apply-
ing ultrasonic vibration. On the other hand, in ultra-pre-
cision micromachining of brittle materials, elliptical vi-
bration was capable of ductile machining without a brit-
tle mode [11]. And Zhao et al. discussed theoretical crit-
ical grinding depth based on the ductile removal me-
chanisms of ultrasonic vibration grinding for the ceram-