Micromachining of borosilicate glass using an electrolyte-sonicated-µ-ECDM system

Abstract

Glass has become an integral part of today’s world. This is because of its wide range of applications owing to its various potential properties. Though it has enormous applications, processing or machining glass is a challenging task. The present study focuses on the generation of microholes on borosilicate glass (thickness: 1000 µm) using an in-house developed in-situ electrolyte-sonicated (ES)-micro electrochemical discharge machining (µ-ECDM), i.e. ES-µ-ECDM system. The experiments revealed that the sonication of electrolytes had increased the electrolyte flushing, which enables the basic µ-ECDM process to push its limits and machine the materials beyond 300 µm (hydrodynamic regime). The process parameters selected for the experimentation are voltage, concentration, and duty factor with sonication of electrolyte at 36 kHz frequency throughout the experiments. Material removal rate (MRR) and overcut (OC) are identified as the machining characteristics in this study. To acquire enhanced machining characteristics, the process parameters are further optimized using the MOJAYA algorithm in conjunction with the R-method which is a multi-attribute decision-making method (MADM). The detailed experimentation revealed that using electrolyte sonication through-holes was achieved at a higher level of parameter settings. © 2022 Taylor & Francis.