Improvement of electrochemical microdrilling accuracy using helical tool

This investigation presents using a microhelical tool as a novel solution in electrochemical microdrilling process to improve the machining accuracy and ability. Fluent CFD is adopted to analyze the flow field status in process. The inlet and outlet diameters of the microholes are 425 mu m and 362 mu m, respectively; the values are obtained using the conventional microsolid cylindrical tool. When the rotation speed of the helical tool is 20,000rpm, and the pulse-off time is 90 mu s, the inlet and outlet diameter significantly decline to 335 mu m and 299 mu m. The experimental results reveal that the accuracy of microhole shape can be significantly improved using the microhelical tool in a simple and low-cost way.