Abstract

Recently with a rapid advance of new material industry, the new materials such as ceramics and glass are increasingly applied to precision machine parts and optical parts etc.. Therefore, requirements of advanced slicing technique for precision slicing of these materials having the features of hardness and brittleness is gradually increasing. Generally, the slicing method using metallic bond diamond blades is using for the slicing of the hard and brittle materials. However, since the diamond blades of upper grits size #200 cannot be used due to the loading of blades etc., it is difficult to achieve the good slicing surface with high quality. In order to achieve the good slicing surface with high quality, post processing operations such as polishing and lapping must be carried out after slicing operation. Therefore, to obtain simultaneously excellent slicing surface such as mirror surface without the post processing operation, development of advanced slicing technique using a metallic bond diamond blade with fine grain size is essential. ELID (Electrolytic In-Process Dressing) is a new grinding technique which the protrudent gains of wheel is controlled and maintained by assistance of the electrolytic in-process dressing(ELID) and especially possesses the excellent capabilities for the fine or mirror surface grinding of hard and brittle materials¹⁾. Many studies on various grinding techniques applying ELID grinding have been reported until now^2),3). In this study, ELID-grinding slicing technique to realize fine and mirror surface slicing of hard and brittle materials is proposed. A mirror surface slicing machine installed with the proposed ELID-grinding slicing system is developed and its performance is evaluated.

© 1998 Optical Society of America