Micro ultrasonic machining using oil based abrasive slurry

Advanced engineering materials posses excellent properties such as high wear resistance, and inertness to corrosion and chemical reactions. Since these materials are usually hard, brittle, chemically inert, and electrically nonconductive, they pose serious machinability challenges. Micro ultrasonic machining (Micro USM) is an emerging method for the micromachining of hard and brittle materials without any thermal damage. This paper presents the results of micro ultrasonic machining using oil based abrasive slurry. Details of the in-house built experimental setup used to conduct the experiments are explained. The influence of process parameters such as slurry medium, slurry concentration, and abrasive particle size on the performance of micro USM are reported. It was noticed that the evidence of three body material removal mechanism is predominant for micro USM using oil based slurry. In general, the material removal rate increases with the increase in the abrasive particle size for both aqueous abrasive slurry and oil based abrasive slurry. Further, material removal rate is consistently higher for experiments conducted with aqueous abrasive slurry medium. On the other hand, it is noticed that the oil based slurry medium provides better surface finish. It is also noticed that the smaller abrasive grains provide better surface finish for both aqueous, and oil based abrasive slurry mediums. Role of slurry concentration is ambiguous, as no clear trend of its effect of on process performance is evident in the available experimental results.