Novel designed mechanical-mechanochemical synergistic micro-grinding technology and compounded abrasive micro-grinding tools

The mechanical and mechanochemical synergistic micro-grinding technology was proposed for grinding hard and brittle materials, especially for fused silica micro parts in this work. Compounded abrasive micro-grinding tools with diamond abrasives on the outer layer and cerium oxide abrasives on the inner layer were designed and fabricated. Efficient grinding was initially achieved by mechanical processing of super hard abrasives, and then ultra-precision processing was obtained by mechanochemical process to remove surface or subsurface damage. This study firstly analyzed the contact model of single diamond abrasive particle and theoretically evaluated ground surface roughness. The mechanism of abrasive layer wear was investigated for accurate error compensation. The formulation of cerium oxide abrasive layer and its processing efficiency were further analyzed. The material removal mechanisms of fused silica during mechanochemical grinding were also studied. Results showed that the material removal rate was 1.924 μm/min and the surface roughness Ra was 0.248 μm after mechanical processing. Subsequently, the surface roughness Ra was improved to 38 nm after mechanochemical processing. The study indicates that this technique is a promising approach for high-efficiency and high-quality grinding of fused silica.