Micro Milling

Abstract

Micro products and components are demanded for industrial applications including electronics, optics, aerospace, medicine, biotechnology etc. in recent years. Laser machining, focused ion beam machining, electrochemical machining, electrodischarge machining and micro mechanical machining have been used to manufacture such components. However, the capability of micro mechanical machining especially micro milling to manufacture a wide range of workpiece materials and complex three-dimensional geometries makes it one of the best candidates to produce the micro parts. Therefore, this chapter provides a review of the current developments in the field of micro milling. Since the mechanism of material removal in micro milling is different from macro milling due to the presence of minimum chip thickness, size effect, elastic recovery and ploughing mechanism, these effects must be taken into consideration in micro milling research. In this chapter, important aspects of the micro milling mechanisms such as minimum chip thickness, size effect, effects of workpiece materials microstructure and cutting edge radius are presented. Furthermore, micro cutting tools are tiny and fragile and can be easily broken due to the excessive deflections, forces and vibrations. Therefore, an appropriate cutting tool geometry and cutting conditions must be selected in micro milling. To this end, the development of micro tool research and applications in micro milling are also presented.