Ultraprecision sculpturing of hardened steel by applying elliptical vibration cutting

Elliptical vibration cutting technology is well-known for its excellent performance in ultraprecision machining of steel materials with single crystal diamond tools. This paper presents two approaches to attain high-performance microand macro-scale sculpturing for steel materials by utilizing elliptical vibration cutting. In order to attain free-form sculpturing in macro-scale, a 4-axis controlled machining method has been proposed. An ultrasonic elliptical vibration system for the proposed method was developed and experimental verifications were conducted. A novel micro/nano-scale sculpturing method was also introduced. In this method, a depth of cut is actively controlled in elliptical vibration cutting by controlling vibration amplitude in the vertical direction. By utilizing this as a fast tool servo function, high performance micro/nano sculpturing of steel materials can be attained directly by single crystal diamond tool without using conventional fast tool servo technology. A practical sculpturing system was developed and applied to various applications, such as textured grooving, picture image machining and dimple pattern sculpturing.