Experimental observation of tool wear in rotary ultrasonic machining of advanced ceramics

As one of the cost-effective machining methods for advanced ceramics, rotary ultrasonic machining (RUM) has attracted much attention and there exist numerous publications on the process. However, few investigations on tool wear in the RUM process have been reported. This paper, for the first time in literature, presents an experimental observation on tool wear in RUM of silicon carbide (SiC). It first reviews some related wear mechanisms for grinding wheels and some techniques for studying the wheel wear mechanisms. After describing the experimental procedures, it presents and discusses the results on tool wear and cutting forces in RUM of SiC. It also discusses some practical implications of the findings from this study. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.