Electric Field-assisted Glass Polishing Using Electro-rheological Gel Pad

A polishing process, which is the final process in manufacturing optical elements, takes a long time and often depends on the experience and special skills. Development of a skill-less polishing technology and automation of its process, therefore, has been required. One of the most promising polishing technologies is Field-assisted Fine Finishing (FFF). In this study, an Electro-rheological Gel (ERG) polishing pad with one-sided patterned electrodes is developed to polish insulator materials and, moreover, a novel electric-field-assisted polishing technology for glass polishing is proposed applying this pad. The ERG polishing pad can change the polishing performance according to applied electric field due to "electro-adhesion effect". Results of several polishing tests show that the performance of polishing a blue glass can be controlled by applying electric field to the ERG pad.