Technical Papers and Presentations

Electrochemical Machining is a potential procedure for micro manufacturing technology. Especially the absence of machining forces makes it advantageous for processing metals with high hardness and for the generation of complicated geometries. Applying a closed electrolytic free jet (Jet Electrochemical Machining - Jet-ECM) the electric current is restricted to a limited area. That allows working gaps of about 100 µm and makes Jet-ECM suitable for manufacturing of feature sizes in sub micrometer scale. Using transient pseudo 3-D COMSOL Multiphysics models the Jet-ECM point machining process can be simulated. Comparing simulated and experimental results a good coincidence especially for small aspect ratios have been found out. At higher aspect ratios the coincidence diminishes. One possible reason therfor is the assumption of a static shape of the jet while processing. To increase the quality of the simulation in this study the up to now neglected interaction of the free jet with the erosion shape was implemented in the model.