Micro machining of pre-sintered ceramic green body

Ceramic materials are widely used in industrial products because of their excellent properties such as resistance to erosion, high temperature and wear. Those properties pose difficulty in processing ceramic materials to desired shapes and dimensions, especially in micro machining of ceramics using micro tools because of the low mechanical strength of tiny tools and the extreme hardness of ceramics. The machining of ceramic green body may be a solution to the problem. However, the low strength of ceramic green body results in low machining accuracy such as damage at the edges of micro features. In this paper, the pre-sintering of ceramic materials was used to enhance the material strength, and hence to improve the machining accuracy. Microstructures of pre-sintered ceramic green bodies at different temperatures were observed and analyzed. The mechanical strength of pre-sintered ceramics was measured. It was confirmed that the mechanical strength of ceramics increased with an increase of pre-sintering temperature. There was no obvious shrinkage after pre-sintering at below 850 - C. The edge damage of machined micro features was reduced significantly. The tool wear increased with the increase of pre-sintering temperature. Finally, a 3D micro feature was machined and the fully sintering shrinkage was compensated accurately. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.