Development of an Ultrasonic Vibration Cutting system for Stavax mould machining

Diamond cutting is superior to generate complex surface of high accuracy and good quality. Vibration-assisted cutting technique is used to further improve the machining performance of conventional diamond cutting by adding vibrations to standard cutting motions. The one-dimensional (1D) linear and two-dimensional (2D) elliptical vibration cutting has been proven to offer superior performance over conventional diamond cutting process. However, massive production of ferrous and hard-to-machine materials by vibration-assisted diamond cutting at industry scale is still unachievable due to severe tool wear. To make diamond cutting a mass production available for manufacturing of cost-effective surface on various materials, high efficiency diamond cutting technology assisted by multi-degrees of freedom vibration is developed in this research. The system will be used to machine complex mirror surfaces of ferrous and hard-to-machine materials by utilizing turning process. The novel and advanced machining technology will be developed to provide economic fabrication of complex surfaces on ferrous and hard-to-machine materials. In this paper, the development of software platform for experimental data acquisition and control signal generation is presented. The presented methodology is an efficient diamond cutting technique resulting in a significant reduction of cutting forces and tool wear, improvement of surface quality, and massive extension of tool life.