Kinematic view of toot life in rotary ultrasonic side milling of hard and brittle materials

Experiments are conducted to study the mechanism of side milling in rotary ultrasonic machining (RUM). The study shows that RUM has less tool wear than grinding at the lateral direction of the cutter under the same conditions. The kinematics of diamond grits is employed for the theoretical analysis. In addition, by using slim diamond cutters, two different machining strategies are used to side mill a microstructure and grooves on a semi-sphere. An improvement strategy of material removal rate (MRR) is also discussed based on the experimental study. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.