Tan Jin

A non-contact ultrasonic abrasive machining approach provides a potential solution to overcome the challenges of machining efficiency in the high-precision polishing of optical components. Accurately modeling the material removal distribution (removal function (RF)) and surface morphology is very important in establishing this new computer-controlled deterministic polishing technique. However, it is a challenging task due to the absence of an in-depth understanding of the evolution mechanism of the material removal distribution and the knowledge of the evolution law of the microscopic surface morphology under the complex action of ultrasonic polishing while submerged in liquid. In this study, the formation of the RF and the surface morphology were modeled by investigating the cavitation density distribution and conducting experiments. The research results showed that the material removal caused by cavitation bubble explosions was uniformly distributed across the entire working surface and had a 0.25 mm edge influence range. The flow scour removal was mainly concentrated in the high-velocity flow zone around the machining area. The roughness of the machined surface increased linearly with an increase in the amplitude and gap. Increasing the particle concentration significantly improved the material removal rate, and the generated surface exhibited better removal uniformity and lower surface roughness.

It is often desired to increase the machining rate while maintaining the desired surface and subsurface integrity during fabricating high-quality optical glass components. This paper proposed a high-speed high-efficiency low-damage grinding technology for machining brittle optical materials, which consists of three grinding processes: rough grinding, semifinishing grinding, and finishing grinding. Grinding characteristics are investigated with respect to grinding forces, specific cutting energy, surface roughness, ground surface quality, subsurface damage, and material removal mechanisms in grinding of fused silica optical glasses with this technology at grinding speeds of up to 150 m/s. These indications are thoroughly discussed by contacting the undeformed chip thickness. The results indicate that the level of these indications is significantly improved with an increase in the wheel speed due to the decrease of the undeformed chip thickness. It is also found that the improvement of ground surface quality is limited when the wheel speed increases from 120 m/s to 150 m/s, which may be due to the influence of vibration caused by the higher wheel speed. For different grinding processes, these results are also substantially improved with the change of grinding conditions. It is found that the material removal mechanism is dominated by brittle fracture at rough and semifinishing grinding processes, while ductile flow mode can be observed at the finishing grinding process. There are some differences between the experimental results and the previous predicted model of subsurface damage depth.