Improvement of Electrochemical Microdrilling Accuracy Using Helical Tool

Abstract

This investigation presents using a microhelical tool as a novel solution in electrochemical microdrilling process to improve the machining accuracy and ability. Fluent CFD is adopted to analyze the flow field status in process. The inlet and outlet diameters of the microholes are 425 µm and 362 µm, respectively; the values are obtained using the conventional microsolid cylindrical tool. When the rotation speed of the helical tool is 20,000 rpm, and the pulse-off time is 90 µs, the inlet and outlet diameter significantly decline to 335 µm and 299 µm. The experimental results reveal that the accuracy of microhole shape can be significantly improved using the microhelical tool in a simple and low-cost way.

Keywords:

• Drilling
• Electrochemical machining
• Helical tool

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

The authors would like to thank the Metal Industries Research and Development Centre for financially supporting this research under contract no. MIRDC95-03015 and thank the National Science Council of the Republic of China, Taiwan, for financially supporting this research under Contract No. NSC 94-2212-E-008-009.