A study of the characteristics for electrochemical micromachining with ultrashort voltage pulses

Electrochemical micromachining (EMM) has traditionally been used in highly specialized fields, such as those of the aerospace and defense industries. It is now increasingly being applied in other industries, where parts with difficult-to-cut material, complex geometry and tribology, and devices of microscopic-scale are required. EMM, which is not normally considered as a precision process, is presented in this paper. The application of voltage pulses between a tool electrode and a workpiece in an electrochemical environment allows the three-dimensional machining of conducting materials with micrometer precision. In this paper, tool electrodes (5 μm in diameter, 1 mm in length) are developed by EMM and microholes are manufactured using these tool electrodes. Microholes with a size of below 50 μm in diameter can be accurately achieved by using ultrashort voltage pulses (1–5 μs).