Implementation of cross-scale plane micro-scratching process driven by hybrid piezoelectric actuation

Abstract The atomic force microscope tip-based mechanical machining technique has been used to fabricate complex micro-structures successfully. However, the machining scope and depth are limited, which holds back this technique severely. This work presents the design and evaluation of a piezoelectric manufacturing system (PMS) for implementation of cross-scale (large scale and high resolution) plane micro-scratching. The PMS has the two-dimensional (2D) micro-machining ability with depths up to 0.98 μm in the millimeter machining scope through the combination of a travel range XY positioning stage and a three-degree-of-freedom (3-DOF) sandwich piezoelectric manipulator. The tracing property of the PMS is feasible for large scale machining by controlling the multi-axis cooperative motion of the 2-DOF stage. The experiments show that the micro-triangles and micro-circles arrays with dimensions from 40 μm to 400 μm are machined successfully. The deviations of the position determination and machined depths for all the micro-structures are less than 5%. Further, it is verified that the manipulator has potential to be used in vibration-assisted cutting to improve machining quality. To sum up, the PMS shows great prospects in the applications of machining cross-scale and large depth planar micro-structures.