A new Approach for the Simultaneous Grinding of Cubic Microstructures in Brittle-Hard Materials.

Beside with photo lithographie processes mirostructures ean be machined in brittlehard materials by grinding. Metallic bonded multilayered grinding wheels offer high potential for low part shape tolerances in micro machining due to their low wear and good profile holding properties [1]. But those tools are difficult to dress. Furthemore, multiple micro profiled grinding wheels are used very seldorn in micro grinding because no adequate miero dressing processes are available. The wear of mechanical micro dressing tools is too high for a profile generation at the grinding wheel. Thus, predominantly thin and simple profiled resin bonded grinding wheels are used for the machining of microstructures. However, the low stiffness of these grinding wheels usually leads to an axial tool deflection. Consequently, the machined flutes are up to ten percent wider than the grinding wheel thickness [2]. Furthermore, the flutes can only be machined in serial, which results in long machining times and requires the compensation of the grinding wheel wear due to the long total grinding length. To machine several microstructures simultaneous with low tool wear grinding with multiple micro profiled metal bonded diamond grinding wheels is investigated in thiscpaper. Electro contact discharge dressing (ECDD) with micro wire electrodes is used for the miro profiling of these grinding tools [3].