CIRP Annals - Manufacturing Technology 57 (2008) 415420

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CIRP Annals - Manufacturing Technology

journal homepage: http://ees.elsevier.com/cirp/default.asp

Development of ultra-precision machining system with unique wire

EDM tool fabrication system for micro/nano-machining
X. Cheng a, K. Nakamoto b, M. Sugai b, S. Matsumoto b, Z.G. Wang a, K. Yamazaki (1)a,*
a
b

Department of Mechanical & Aeronautical Engineering, University of California, One shields Avenue, Davis 95616-5294, USA
Sodick Co. Ltd., Yokohama, Japan

A R T I C L E I N F O

A B S T R A C T

Keywords:
Ultra-precision machine tool
Wire EDM
Ductile mode micromachining

Aiming at quality machining of very hard materials with nanometer level surface quality and 0.1 mm
dimensional accuracy, an ultra-precision machining system has been developed. The machine has feed
axes accompanied by the counter motion mechanism driven at the center of gravity to eliminate the
vibration caused by high acceleration/deceleration. A custom tool fabrication system consists of a 6-axis
wire EDM machine and dedicated custom tool CAM system. High quality machining of sophisticated
three-dimensional (3D) products made of tungsten carbide has successfully been demonstrated on the
developed machine tool with custom-made PCD cutters fabricated by the tool fabrication system.
2008 CIRP.

1. Introduction
One of the most popular nanometer level machining applications is to create molds for super precision micro-glass products
made of very hard materials. Micro-glass lenses are generally mass
produced by press molding of glasses with dies or molds made of
tungsten carbide or silicon carbide. The fabrication of such molds
has typically been done by grinding with micro-diamond wheels
[1,2]. However, the three-dimensional shape of the recent microglass products is getting more sophisticated and axis asymmetric,
thus, its mold cannot be fabricated by using simple grinding
wheels. These shapes require three-dimensional nano-machining
using end milling technologies. Since the machined surface needs
to be very smooth, the nano-machining of hard and brittle
materials such as tungsten carbide, has to be performed in the
ductile mode. Recently, researchers have developed high
precision machine tools for the micro/nano-machining process
[3,4], but the ductile mode micro/nano-machining process can
only be performed under very low feed rates and very small depths
of cut. Because of this, it is very difcult to achieve reasonable
productivity.
In addition, one of the biggest challenges for mechanical
micromachining is the design and fabrication of micro-cutting
tools [5]. Many studies have been performed to fabricate or
optimize the geometry of the tool. Uhlmann et al. carried out the
load analysis of current micro-end mills and pointed out that the
design of todays micro-end mills is not appropriate for the type of
load, which they have to withstand and they proposed the
parametric tool design method for micro-end mills and veried its
feasibility [6]. Egashira and Mizutani have demonstrated the
possible fabrication of custom-designed micro-drills made of

* Corresponding author.
0007-8506/$ see front matter 2008 CIRP.
doi:10.1016/j.cirp.2008.03.137

tungsten carbide with very simple geometry using a standard

3-axis wire EDM machine [7].
In order to introduce the breakthrough into the aforementioned
current status of nano/micro-ductile mode machining, the entire
machining system consisting of a high-speed machine tool system
and custom micro-tool fabrication system has been proposed and a
development study has been performed. The study aims at the
realization of highly productive nano/micro-ductile mode machining of sophisticated 3D geometry products made of very hard mold
materials such as tungsten carbide, etc.
2. Design of ultra-precision machine tool
2.1. High-precision machine structure and vibration suppression
mechanism by counter motion axes at the center of gravity
In the high-speed machining centers, vibration of the axially
moving components leads to operational problems and limits their
utility in many applications, and particularly for high-speed and
high-precision systems. Vibration control is a key to improve the
machines performance.
The machines moving parts are made entirely of alumina
ceramics to reduce the mass of movable components and improve
the stiffness, which can also help to minimize their thermal
deformation during motion. All moving axes are equipped with
dual linear motors and with high precision type linear roller guide
ways. The spindle adopts the aerostatic bearing and is driven by a
120,000 min1 air turbine motor.
Productive micro/nano-machining requires high speed feed
motion. Since the travel distance of each motion is usually very
short, the motion direction is always changing under the highspeed movement, thus the machine is always subjected to
impulsive excitation. Therefore, the machine vibrates continuously during machining unless any countermeasure is taken to
actively suppress the vibration. To eliminate the vibration, the

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X. Cheng et al. / CIRP Annals - Manufacturing Technology 57 (2008) 415420

design concept of the counter motion mechanism has been

employed for X- and Y-axes as shown in Fig. 1. In this mechanism,
the moving mass of the component such as spindle unit (X-axis) or
the table (Y-axis) moves in one direction, and the counter block

Fig. 1. Mechanical structure of the designed machine tool. ((1) Spindle; (2) linear
motor for damping-axis X1; (3) xed supporter 1; (4) X-axis slider made of
ceramics; (5) linear motor for X-axis; (6) xed supporter 2; (7) linear motor for
damping-axis X2). (a) Wire frame overview and (b) main components.

with same mass will move in the opposite direction. When X-axis
slider moves about its gravity center with high acceleration, active
forces (Fx1 and Fx2) are applied on two xed supporters.
Simultaneously, the reactive forces or control forces (F1 and F2)
are generated by linear motors along two damping axes and also
applied on the xed supporter. Similar mechanism is used for Yaxis. The resultant forces of reactive forces are exactly equal to the

Fig. 2. Custom tooling machine tool and coordinates: (a) 6-axis WEDM machine tool
and (b) coordinate system.

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417

used to heat up the tool holder within 1015 s. The shrink t holder
provides high accuracy tool changes without deection and
loosening. Overall tool-to-tool changing time is 3 min. In addition,
two specically designed laser tool detection systems are installed
in the machine to automatically determine three-dimensional
cutting tool positions. The offset between the cutting tool and
workpiece is measured through a touch sensor system and two
laser detection systems.
3. Micro-tool fabrication system
3.1. Unique 6-axis wire EDM machine
Fig. 3. Processing ow of the CAM.

active forces, and their applied positions on two xed supporters

are very close to each other, therefore torsion loads on the xed
supporters are greatly reduced. Similar vibration suppression
mechanism is used for the worktable along Y-axis. Only the Z-axis
is equipped with a compressed air counter balancing system. Since
the feed motion is always accompanied by the counter motion
with exactly same timing, the impulsive shocks cancel out each
other and no excitation will be given to each axis. X-, Y- and Z-axes
are all equipped with two linear motors such that the resultant
feed force of each axis is always acting at the center of gravity. The
Z-axis is integrated into the table (Y-axis) such that the height of
the gravity center of the spindle unit never changes along the
X-direction.

To fabricate sophisticated shaped micro-cutting tools made of

diamond (PCD), a custom micro-tool fabrication system including
the unique 6 d.f. CNC wire EDM machine and dedicated CAM
system has been developed. Fig. 2(a) shows the main part of the
developed EDM machine, which has three-linear axes (X, Y, Z) and
three-angular axes (C, U, V). The axis conguration makes the
fabrication of complicated tools possible. The tool blank clamped
on the spindle can be moved along X-, Y- and Z-axes to locate the
cutting position and rotated around the C-axis center to index the
tool cylindrical surface against the wire. The wire orientation can
be controlled by two angular motions, namely U and V, which
orient the wire to form the cutting edge surface designed with the
avoidance control of wire interference.
3.2. Requirements for custom tool fabrication

2.2. Design of high-precision control system

The linear motor employed is a specially designed coreless
linear motor aiming at low thrust uctuation, light mass and low
impedance to maximize transient response. It is also effective to
minimize the vibration of the moving components.
High-resolution feedback sensors are used to achieve very
precise and stable motion control of the linear motor. The
machine is equipped with the laser holographic scale having the
resolution of 3 nm/pulse. The minimum unit of motion
command of a CNC program is 10 nm and the maximum
machining feed rate is 5 m/min.
To maximize the tool holding rigidity, an automatic shrink-t
tool holding system having special thermal expansion properties
with automatic tool changing (ATC) capability is directly
integrated into the spindle. High frequency induction heating is

The major requirement for custom tool fabrication is to provide

a user-friendly environment to dene the complicated tool
geometry. Also, it is necessary to automatically generate the
optimum machine motion and EDM machining conditions when
the tool geometry is given. Furthermore, the machine critical
dimensions, which have a direct accuracy inuence on the tool
fabrication, are dynamically ne-tuned based on the fabrication
result.
3.3. Design and development of custom tool CAM system
To fulll the requirements, the process ow of the CAM system
has been designed as shown in Fig. 3.
Custom tool geometry can be dened through the graphical
user interface (GUI). Fig. 4(a) shows an example of the tool

Fig. 4. GUIs of micro-tools fabrication CAM system: (a) 2-ute cutter geometry and (b) machine tool parameters.

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418

Fig. 5. Wire offset calculation.

geometry GUI of a 2-ute special cutter. For the machine tool

dimensional parameters for kinematics, the GUI has been
developed as shown in Fig. 4(b). Also, the EDM machining
conditions can be dened through the GUI. After the input is
made through GUIs, the system checks the input values to verify
their logical correctness to avoid inconsistent and erroneous
denitions. Based on the dened parameters, the wire location
(WL) data is generated. A post-processing function translates the
WL data to NC codes by a kinematics model and format conversion
using machine tool parameters. The kinematics model used for
post processing has been developed based on the coordinates as
shown in Fig. 2(b), where SO is the machine tool coordinate, SM is
the working coordinate, SP and SC are the machining point
coordinate on the workpiece and the wire, respectively, SU is
U-axis coordinate, SV is V-axis coordinate. Then:
O TP  O TM RuY1 M TP 

(1)

O TC  O TV RuY2 V TU RuX U TC 

(2)

where TY is the transformation matrix from the X-coordinate to Ycoordinate and R is the rotation matrix around a single axis. During
machining OTP equals OTC. From this, the unknown linear and
rotation axis motions of the machine tool can be solved to make the
wire and the workpiece touch at the expected position and
orientation.
In order to cut the workpiece accurately, the wire offset must be
considered. The offset value for each linear motion can be
calculated by
OffsetX jE1 E2 j RE sin B sin D

Fig. 6. Frequency response components.

Fig. 7. Reciprocal movement of spindle along x-axis.

(3)

Fig. 8. Two types of fabricated PCD tools: (a) 2-ute cutter and (b) hex-polygon
cutter.

OffsetY jE2 E4 j RE cos B

(4)

OffsetZ jE3 E4 j RE sin B cos D

(5)

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419

Fig. 9. Surface roughness with 2-ute cutter at f = 0.1 mm/rev-tooth and different
cooling method.

where B is cutting point central angle, D has the same value as wire
rotation angle A as shown in Fig. 5, C1C2 the tangential line between
workpiece and wire discharging envelope, and RE is the wire radius
plus the discharge gap under current machining conditions as
shown in Fig. 5.
With Eqs. (1)(5), axis motions of the EDM machine can be
calculated from WL and the NC program is generated automatically.

Fig. 10. Surface roughness with 2-ute cutter at f = 0.1 mm/rev-tooth and different
axial depth of cut.

4. System verication and evaluation

table when the X-axis is driven by the acceleration/deceleration

pattern shown in Fig. 7 (a is acceleration and T is the period) with
and without counter motion. The vibration signals have been
greatly suppressed by the counter motion system. The similar
signicant reduction of vibration amplitude has also been
observed for Y-axis tests. Based on these facts, the effectiveness
of vibration suppression system with the counter motion has been
veried.

4.1. Machine tool basic performance

4.2. Micro-cutter fabrication

In order to evaluate the effectiveness of the counter motion

system, experiments have been conducted by moving reciprocally
the X and Y feed axes with a variable short distance L with a
constant jerk. Fig. 6 shows the results of the detected frequency
components measured through an accelerometer mounted on the

Using the micro-tool fabrication system, a special 2-ute cutter

made of PCD (f: 1 mm, grain size: 0.5 mm, hardness: 90100 GPa)
and the hex-polygon PCD cutter (f: 0.2 mm) have been fabricated.
Fig. 8(a) and (b) shows the SEM photographs of these fabricated
PCD tools.

Fig. 11. Machined surface prole with 2-ute cutter at ad = 0.2 mm, f = 0.1 mm/rev-z.

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420

because the critical depth of cut for ductile mode machining for WC
is around 1.2 mm as previously mentioned.
To evaluate the capability of ductile mode machining of
sophisticated 3D WC products, the workpiece shown in Fig. 12
has been machined. First, the very smooth at surface has been
created by 2-ute cutter (Fig. 8(a)) with an axial depth of cut (ad) of
0.2 mm, resulting in nanometer level surface roughness as shown
in Fig. 11. After creating the at surface, a thin curved rib of 3.0 mm
in width and 30.0 mm in height has been machined by the hexpolygon micro-cutter (as shown in Fig. 8(b)). The SEM micrographs
of local areas A1 and A2 of the machined rib are shown in Fig. 12(b)
and (c), respectively. This type of complex micro-rib geometry is
almost impossible to be machined by micro-grinding. The
experimental results prove that the developed system has
achieved the targeted performance for productive nano-machining
of sophisticated 3D geometry products made of hard materials.
5. Conclusion
The ultra high precision machine tool has been designed and
developed for productive nano-machining of sophisticated 3D
geometry products made of hard materials and the following are
conclusions:

Fig. 12. SEM pictures of the machined micro-rib: (a) overview of the workpiece, (b)
detailed view of area A1 and (c) detailed view of area A2.

4.3. Micromachining experiments

With the fabricated PCD tools, the experimental machining
tests have been performed. To determine the optimum conditions
for ductile mode machining, the critical depth of cut, dc, has been
calculated based on the equation (6) indicated in the past research
works [8,9]:
dc C

 
E Kc 2
H H

(6)

where C is a dimensionless constant (around 0.15), H is the

hardness (Pa), Kc is the fracture toughness (Pa m1/2), and E is the
elastic modulus (Pa).
The workpiece material used is cemented tungsten carbide
(WC) whose mechanical properties are E = 570.0 GPa, Kc =
8.3 MPa m1/2, and H = 17.29 GPa [10]. With these values, dc is
calculated as 1.2 mm when C = 0.15 as given in [8].
First, the 2-ute PCD cutter has been used to nd the optimum
machining conditions under two types of lubrication and cooling
methods and various axial depths of cut. In the experiments, a
synthetic uid with a density of 0.86 g/cm3 and kinematic viscosity
of 7.59 mm2/s, and a semi-synthetic uid with a density of 0.95 g/
cm3 and kinematic viscosity of 32.7 mm2/s are used as ood
coolant and mist coolant (MQL), respectively. During experiments,
the spindle rotational speed is kept at a constant 120,000 min1. At
low depths of cut, mist and ood coolant have a similar effect on
the surface roughness, but the oil ood coolant is more effective at
higher axial depths of cut, as shown in Fig. 9, due to its strong
lubricating and cooling capabilities.
As shown in Fig. 10, the surface roughness gradually increases
when the axial depth of cut is beyond 1.01.2 mm under the ood
coolant. The possible reason is that the machining process is
making a gradual transition from ductile mode to brittle mode

 A unique counter motion linear motor system has been

developed such that stable machining can be performed at up
to 0.5 g acceleration/deceleration.
 For the custom tool fabrication, the unique 6-axis wire EDM
machine has been developed with the CAM system, which can
automatically generate NC programs through the user-friendly
GUIs to dene the tool geometry and machine system parameters.
 Custom-designed micro-PCD cutters (1 mm and 200 mm in
diameter) have successfully been made by the developed tool
fabrication system.
 Using the fabricated tools, the miniature sophisticated 3D
geometry workpiece made of tungsten carbide has successfully
been machined in the ductile mode achieving the machined
surface roughness, Ra, of less than 10 nm and peak to valley, Ry,
of less than 30 nm, thus verifying the excellent capability of
designed machine tool and tool fabrication system.

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