Generation of Textured Surfaces by Vibration-Assisted Ball-End Milling

Textured surfaces have been widely applied in many fields due to their excellent functional performances. Although several micro-scale surface texturing techniques have been used to fabricate surface textures, most are either very expensive, have material limitations, or lack flexibility. In this study, a novel textured surface generation method using vibration-assisted ball-end milling with a non-resonant vibrator is proposed. Firstly, the configuration of the vibration-assisted ball-end milling system is introduced. Then, the trajectories of the cutting edges are modeled and analyzed. Furthermore, an analysis of a non-resonant vibrator is conducted. Finally, surface texture machining experiments are conducted, and the feasibility of the proposed vibration-assisted ball-end milling method for surface texture fabrication is verified. A VA-BEM using a non-resonant vibrator was proposed for surface texture fabrication.The tool trajectory in the VA-BEM process was modeled, and the quantitative relationships between the generated dimple geometric parameters and cutting and vibration parameters were built.Experimental results were highly consistent with theoretical results, demonstrating that the proposed VA-BEM can precisely fabricate surface textures.