Signal analysis of surface roughness in diamond turning of lens molds

Diamond turning of high-precision lens molds is an important production process. The surface roughness of the mold heavily affects the quality of lens. In diamond turning, the surface roughness obtained depends on the cutting tool, the cutting conditions, the machine characteristics, the surrounding vibrations and the work piece material. This work studies the surface roughness obtained from the diamond turning of a phosphor-bronze lens mold with various tool nose radii, spindle speeds, feed rates and cutting depths. The surface roughness was measured in the time domain using a Form Talysurf instrument (a stylus-type surface roughness meter) and then transformed into the frequency domain using the fast Fourier transform. Based on the magnitude of the intensity, the tool geometry, low-frequency vibration and the measuring instrument are identified as the main influencing factors of the generated surface roughness. The intensities associated with the latter two vary little with the cutting conditions and are thus considered constant. The intensity of the tool geometry varies with the feed rate, the spindle speed and the radius of the tool nose. A relationship between the root-mean-square summation of the surface roughness and cutting conditions was found. The model agrees well with the experimental results. The analysis also identified the critical feed rate that maximized machining productivity, below which the surface roughness was only slightly improved as the production rate fell sharply. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.