Effect of Ultrasonic Vibration Drilling on Cutting Stress Distribution

A drill processing for the difficult to cut material such as ceramics, hardened steel, glass and heat-resistant steel is widely requested in the industrial world. Furthermore the drilling process becomes more and more difficult in the case of that the requested hole diameter is less than one millimeter. In order to achieve requirements for drilling process, ultrasonically assisted machining is applicable. Ultrasonic vibration assisted machining techniques are suitable to machine difficult-to-cut materials precisely. The ultrasonic vibration assisted sub-millimeter drilling process reduces the cutting forces and prevents severe wear of tools. However, it is difficult to observe directly the effect of vibration action because the process of ultrasonic drilling is dynamic instantaneous and micro cutting process. In this report, high speed camera with appropriately arranged polarized device realized the visualization of process of ultrasonic drilling based on the photoelastic analysis. For the conventional drilling, the stress distribution diagram showed the intensive stress occurred under the chisel and side wall. On the other hand, the ultrasonic drilling produced lower and stable cutting force and decreased the tool temperature.