Manufacturing of A micro probe using supersonic aided electrolysis process

TL;DR

This paper presents a novel micromachining process combining precision grinding, electrolysis, and supersonic aided electrolysis to fabricate high-aspect-ratio micro tungsten carbide probes with smooth surfaces.

Contribution

It introduces a combined manufacturing method utilizing supersonic aided electrolysis for precise, high-quality micro probe fabrication, improving surface finish and micro hole depth.

Findings

Supersonic agitation improves surface roughness.

High-aspect-ratio micro tungsten carbide rods are achievable.

Micro probes with ball-shaped tips are fabricated successfully.

Abstract

In this paper, a practical micromachining technology was applied for the fabrication of a micro probe using a complex nontraditional machining process. A series process was combined to machine tungsten carbide rods from original dimension. The original dimension of tungsten carbide rods was 3mm ; the rods were ground to a fixed-dimension of 50 micrometers using precision grinding machine in first step. And then, the rod could be machined to a middle-dimension of 20 micrometers by electrolysis. A final desired micro dimension can be achieved using supersonic aided electrolysis. High-aspect-ratio of micro tungsten carbide rod was easily obtained by this process. Surface roughness of the sample with supersonic aided agitation was compared with that with no agitation in electrolysis. The machined surface of the sample is very smooth due to ionized particles of anode could be removed by supersonic aided agitation during electrolysis. Deep micro holes can also be achieved by the machined high-aspect-rati tungsten carbide rod using EDM process. A micro probe of a ball shape at the end was processed by proposed supersonic aided electrolysis machining process.