Recent Advances in Mechanical Micromachining Essay

Recent Advances in Mechanical Micromachining - Essay Example There are much considerations to be taken when machining small pieces due to the imperfections per unit volume that are due to the size effect of the work piece and the strain effect that is caused by the size effect during machining of the small pieces of work pieces (Dornfeld & Takeuchi, 2006). An example is energy dissipation that has been neglected or along time in micro machining that resulted to significant subsurface plastic flow to the shear zone under the machined surface. 2. One of the micro geometries created through micromachining is the fabrication of multi level mold inserts for micro molding of a microwave system. This involved combination of micromachining with deep etches X-ray lithography that resulted to creation of micro molds with features in the range of 60Â µm in height and 50Â µm wide. This portrayed the possibility of stacking several mold so high aspect ratio parts (Dornfeld & Takeuchi, 2006). 3. Micro tooling refers to using the correct tools in micromachining. The cutting edge of radius of a crystal sharpened diamond for example is on the order of 10nm and the depth of such a tool is in the submicron range. Micro tools are fabricated by ion beam process. An example is the gallium focused ion beam that generates a number of cutting edges and tool end clearance and machined surface with the same as eh diameter of the tool. The use of wire electric discharge grinding (WEDG) (Dornfeld & Takeuchi, 2006) is also common in tool fabrication. WEDG involves a sacrificial wire that replaces the turning tool in conventional turning. Material is then eroded from the rotating tool with electrical discharges. The sacrificial wire in this case is fed around a reel and takes up system that would prevent discharges from worn out regions and this increases the accuracy of the tool shape (Dornfeld & Takeuchi, 2006). Micro tools are usually made from tungsten wire due to