Grinding of Microstructures in Brittle Materials with Multiple Microprofiled Grinding Wheels

INTRODUCTION The manufacturing of complex shaped microstructures on microsystem parts in brittle materials provides a high geometrical accuracy [1]. This requirement can only be met by using microgrinding processes. There, metal bonded diamond grinding tools offer a remarkable potential due to their favorable wear behavior [2]. However, the dressing of complex microprofiles on these tools is not possible using mechanical dressing methods because of a high dresser wear and high dressing forces. Thus, Electro contact discharge dressing (ECDD) is used for the microprofiling of the grinding wheels. ECDD is a numerically controlled dressing process offering the possibility to create the geometry and topography of the grinding wheel simultaneously at negligible dressing forces [3]. The power of an electric circuit thermally removes the metal bond of the grinding wheel in ECDD [4,5]. This paper presents investigations about the influence of the workpiece material and the grinding process parameters on the chipping at the edge of microstructures. Furthermore, strategies to reduce the microstructure dimensions and increase the flank angle of the microstructures are shown. ECDD is used for the dressing of the grinding wheels prior to the grinding experiments.