Mathematical modeling and verification of pulse electrochemical micromachining of microtools

Pulse electrochemical micromachining (PECMM) is an unconventional manufacturing method suitable for the production of micro-sized components on a wide range of electrically conductive materials. PECMM in this study has been used to manufacture microtools. The non-contact nature of PECMM has necessitated the modeling of the process to estimate the anodic profile (microtool profile). This paper presents a mathematical model for predicting the diameter of the microtools fabricated by PECMM process. Tungsten microtools of diameters less than 100 mu m were fabricated using an in-house built microelectrochemical machining system. Experimental results confirm the theoretical prediction of reduction in tool diameter with respect to increasing machining time. Further, from the experimental verification, it was found that the deviations in the tool diameters were within 9 % of the theoretical predictions.