Microsystem Technologies 9 (2002) 6166 Springer-Verlag 2002 DOI 10.

1007/s00542-002-0184-8

Development of electrochemical micro machining for air-lubricated hydrodynamic bearings

J.-W. Park, E.-S. Lee, C.-H. Won, Y.-H. Moon

61 Abstract A specially-built EMM (Electrochemical Micro Machining)/PECM (Pulse Electrochemical Machining) cell, a electrode tool lled with non-conducting material, a electrolyte ow control system and a small & stable gap control unit are developed to achieve accurate dimensions of spindle recesses. Two electrolytes, aqueous sodium nitrate and aqueous sodium chloride are investigated in this study. The former electrolyte with few pits on the surface of workpiece has better machine-ability than the latter one with many pits on the surface of workpiece. It is easier to control the machining depth precisely with pulse electrical current than direct electrical current. This paper also presents an identication method for the machining depth by in-process analysis of applied electrical current and interelectrode gap size. The interelectrode gap characteristics, including pulse electrical current, effective volumetric electrochemical equivalent and electrolyte conductivity variations, are analyzed using the model and experimental results. machining has been used in industry for cutting, deburring, drilling and shaping the workpiece. Electrochemical micromachining (EMM) is necessary to improve the wide variety of technologies such as electrocommunications, semiconductors, computer OA appliances and ultra precision machinery. Actually, it is unfortunate that theoretical developments of microshapes in a design have not been realized due to difculties in their manufacture. For example, gas-lubricated spindle design based on its lubricating principles has a large potential to help the industries that require high speed rotation. Examples include: spindle bearings for gyroscopes, hard disk drives, CDROMS, scanners, laser printers, high speed rotating machinery, dentists drills and rotary pumps [1, 2]. Although the theoretical dimensional analyses of gaslubricated spindles have been developed since the early 1960s, the machining of microshapes has been very difcult. For this reason they are not produced worldwide [3]. Hence, the aim of this work is to develop an electrochemical micromachining (EMM) process and system for the manufacture of micro grooves by rst establishing appropriate electrochemical parameters for the micromachining [4, 5]. Application of electrical current in pulses to the cathode, rather than DC, offers signicant improvements in dimensional accuracy as compared with conventional electrochemical machining. Examples include: diminishing the gap size to below 0.1mm, reducing the inaccuracy of the machined prole caused by internal disturbance, eliminating the macro defects on machined surface connected with the hydrodynamic ow disturbances. One primary issue in pulse electrochemical micromachining(PECM) is using pulses of electrical current to identify and control machining depth as well as the gap size between the two electrodes. This paper presents an identication method for estimating the machined groove depth by using in-process measurement of the machining current and interelectrode gap size [6, 7, 8].

1 Introduction Electrochemical machining, one of the non-traditional machining techniques, can be used to achieve a desired workpiece surface by dissolving the metal workpiece with an electrochemical reaction. This machining method can be applied to the metal that is difcult to machining using other methods, for example, heat-treated steel. In electrochemical machining, the workpiece dissolves when it is positioned closely to the tool electrode in an electrolyte solution with an applied electrical current. Electrochemical
Received: 5 July 2001/Accepted: 11 December 2001

J.-W. Park, Y.-H. Moon Mechanical Engineering Division, Pusan National University, Pusan, 609-735, Korea E.-S. Lee (&) Mechanical Engineering Division, Inha University, Incheon, 402-751, Korea E-mail: leees@inha.ac.kr

2 Electrochemical material removal model C.-H. Won The procedure for calculating removal rates for a pure Yewon Tech Co., Ltd., Taejon, 306-020, Korea element is as follows. If the atomic weight, A, valency of This work was supported by Korea Research Foundation Grant the dissolving ions, z and the applied electrical current, I, are known, and F is a Faradays constant, the Faradays law (KRF-2001-041-E00095) gives the rate of material removal, Paper presented at the 12th Annual Symposium on Information dm dm AI Storage and Processing Systems, Santa Clara, CA, USA, 2829 : 1 dt dt zF June, 2001.

Calculation of the removal rate for an alloy is more difcult than that for a single element because the electrochemical equivalent, A=Z, of the alloy is not readily known. Hence, a Superposition of charge method is applied in this study to dene it: [9]

   . X A XB A 100 AA =ZA AB =ZB Z Alloy

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where, A; B: elements of alloy XA : % of element A XB : % of element B AA : atomic weight of element A AB : atomic weight of element B ZA : valency of element A ZB : valency of element B

Two concentrations of electrolytes, aqueous sodium nitrate and aqueous sodium chloride, are investigated in this study. They have several advantages including safety and low cost. The EMM workpieces were created for the experiment with a wire-cutting machine. The manufacture of both journal grooves and thrust grooves were investigated in this work. The experimental conditions are presented in Table 1. The quality of the machined surface was measured with a surface prole meter and usually inspected with an optical microscope and metallographic microscope.

4 Comparison of electrolyte parameters Two concentrations of electrolytes, aqueous sodium nitrate and aqueous sodium chloride are investigated in this study. The electrolyte plays a role in promoting the electrochemical reaction and the removal of not only the waste 3 slurry but also the generated heat in the inter electrode Experiment An experiment was setup to measure the electrochemical gap. Figure 3 compares results of the two concentrations of electrolytes according to the micro machined grooves at micro machining parameters. For this work, a specially the anode surface. The temperature of electrolyte is 20 C, designed apparatus was developed in this study, and is and direct electrical current is applied throughout the illustrated in Fig. 1. The cathode tool and the anode machining time. workpiece are connected to the negative terminal and It can be seen in Fig. 3 that the grooves on the anode positive terminal of power supply respectively. The elecsurface have an irregular depth and non-uniform surface trolyte solution is supplied through a hole in the cathode to make the electrochemical reaction homogeneous; it is prole, when the electrolyte of aqueous sodium chloride is used. And pits formed by the current localization make the circulated through a micro-lter to remove debris. anode surface coarser than the raw surface before elecFigure 2 is a cross-sectional diagram of A-A in Fig. 1 after the electrochemical machining process. In case that trochemically micro machined. Because the electrolyte of aqueous sodium chloride has narrow inter electrode gap and specially designed cathode a tendency to corrode metal easily and has nearly 100% are applied, a shape of rectangular groove can be machined because of high concentration of current to the anode material. The applied power source can provide a Table 1. Experimental set up maximum of 20 V and 500 A.
Power supply Workpiece material (anode) Electrolyte Electrode tool (cathode) Surface prole meter Optical surface measurement 20 V, 500 A DC, Variable pulse width STS304 DISC Aqueous NaCl, Aqueous NaNO3 Bronze Mitutoyo surftest SV400 CCD Camera (100, 200)

Fig. 1. Schematic diagram of electrochemical micromachining test setup

Fig. 2. Cross-sectional diagram of A-A in Fig. 1

Fig. 3. Comparison of groove proles created with 2 electrolytes (Applied DC voltage 8V, T 20)

current efciency, the anode zone which is far from the cathode electrode can easily react, too. When the electrolyte of aqueous sodium nitrate is used, results show that the grooves on the anode surface have a more regular depth and more uniform surface prole than the case of aqueous sodium chloride electrolyte. However, it can be seen from the proles that localized sedimentation is formed at the side of groove. This arises from the concentration of electrical current at the edges of the electrode. This result will be discussed in Sect. 5.

In this test, DC current was applied for 5 s, the electrolyte temperature was 20 C, and the direct current density was 0.54 and 0.58 A/cm2. The electrolyte was aqueous sodium nitrate and was supplied through a hole in the electrode. When the electrode gap becomes small, the electrical resistance between the cathode and anode decreases. This relationship enhances the electrochemical reaction and as a result the depth of grooves increases. When the gap becomes too narrow, the anode surface prole becomes coarser. This may be due to non-uniform ow of electrolyte ow within the gap. On the other hand, when the electrode gap becomes too large, the electrochemical re5 action and localized dissolution cannot occur at the anode Results according to electrode gap width surface because the electrical resistance between the and shape of electrode tool Figure 4 illustrates the relationship between the electrode cathode and anode is too high. Hence an optimum electrode gap has been established gap width and the depth of grooves for NaNO3 electrolyte. in this experiment to be 0.1$0.15 mm. An electrical current concentration at edges and irregular parts of the electrode tool can create a localized sedimentation on the anode surface. It is recommended that a specially designed electrode should be used in electrochemical micro machining in order to control the dimension of micro grooves. Figure 5 compares electrochemically micro machined surfaces created with two different electrodes. Electrode 1, traditionally designed, has a concentrated electrical current at the edge marked 2. Electrode 2, having a non-conducting part marked 3, has uniform current distribution on the surface marked 4. While the localized sedimentation on the anode workpiece surface has been identied in prole of grooves created by electrode 1, any localized sedimentation on the anode surface has not been identied in prole of grooves created by electrode 2. This is because the non conducting Fig. 4. Relationship between electrode gap and depth of grooves part, 3 in the side of the electrode design. for 2 electrodes, NaNO electrolyte, T 20
3

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Fig. 5. Comparison between two different electrodes. Electrode 1, traditionally designed, has a concentrated electrical current at the edge marked 2. Electrode 2, having a nonconducting part marked 3, has uniform current distribution on the surface marked 4

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6 PECM process model development The electrical resistance of the electrolyte solution has been recognized one of the most important parameters in EMM/PECM. The conductivity of the electrolyte is affected by temperature and hydrogen gas generation. A simplied equivalent circuit of two electrodes in Fig. 6 can illustrate the concept of our method to contain combined electrochemical resistance, which contains both resistance of mechanical system, Rm, and electrolyte, Re. The type of electrode 2 in Fig. 5 is used in the following discussion. The combined electrolyte conductivity. jC can be expressed by Ohms law: Si jC 3 V where S is the gap size, i is the current density and V is the applied voltage. The change is gap width is directly proportional to the material removal rate. The change rate in gap width dS=dt during the pulse duration can be obtained from the Faradays Law [10, 11, 12]: dS Ajc V0 DV f dt Szqa F 4

By solving Eq. (5), the gap size, S, is obtained as:

A 6 zFqa where Km, effective volumetric electrochemical equivalent, is a constant dened by the anode worpiece; Km has a value of 3.57 10)5 cm3/sA in this study. The initial conditions are S S0 at t 0. Equation 6 shows that the gap size increases with the square root of the machining time; see Fig. 7. Figure 7 shows the variation of the gap size, S, with initial condition S0 0.4 mm. The applied voltage V0 varies for a given pulse duration. This indicates the increased gap size equals to the electrochemically-machined depth of grooves. For example, when son 400 s. DS 0.1 mm for V0 12 V and DS 0.08 mm for V0 8 V. Figure 8 shows the variation of the gap size, S, with theoretical and experimental results. When the applied voltage, V0, varies for a given short pulse duration. For example, based on the theoretical results, DS 5.2 lm for V0 7 V, son 5 s, and DS 10.4 lm for V0 7 V, son 10 s, which is closely equal to the experimental where jm

q S1 S2 2Km jC Vt; 0

where V0 is the voltage pulse, DV is the overpotential, qa is the anode density and f is the feed-rate of electrode. There is no feed of electrode tool in electrochemical micro machining of air-lubricated hydrodynamic grooves because the depth of groove is below 10 lm. The gap size, S, from son to soff can be expressed as:
off Z on

S dS

off Z on

AjC V0 DV dt zqa F

Fig. 7. Model results of gap variation with pulse duration son and voltage V0 for three voltages

Fig. 6. Schematic diagram of an electrochemical cell. Combined electrochemical resistance contains both resistance of mechanical Fig. 8. Experimental and model results of gap variation with system, Rm, and electrolyte Re pulse duration son (025 sec) and voltage V0

Fig. 11. Groove prole of the journal bearing. The depth of groove is within 7~8

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Fig. 9. Model results of gap variation with pulse duration Fig. 12. Example of air-lubricated herringbone bearing assembly for hard disk drives

than those in ECM with continuous current where the gap size, below 0.15 mm, is usually difcult to maintain uniformly. Figure 10 is the summary of results in this study with electrochemical micro machining. Fig. 10a is the shape of micro recesses of air-lubricated herringbone bearings to achieve in this study and (b), (c) are electrochemically micromachined grooves of thrust and journal bearings respectively. Figure 11 shows a groove prole of the journal bearing and the depth of groove is within 7$8 lm. Figure 12 is an example of air-lubricated herringbone bearing assembly for hard disk drives. Further studies about overpotential, Joule heating and hydrogen generation in pulse electrochemical machining and their impart on controlling precise groove dimensions will be continued.

7 Conclusions Based on the investigations of electrochemical micro machining for air-lubricated hydrodynamic bearings carried out, the following conclusions may be drawn.
1. Two electrolytes, aqueous sodium nitrate and aqueous sodium chloride were explained in this study. The former electrolyte, without pits on the surface of workpiece, has better machine-ability than the latter one. Fig. 10ac. Shape of micro grooves of air-lubricated bearings 2. Our experiments show an optimum electrode gap of 0.1$0.15 mm. This takes into consideration the electrolyte ow as well as the appropriate electrochemical results of DS 5.2 lm for V0 7 V, son 5 s and reaction. DS 12 lm for V0 7 V, son 10 s. 3. To control the depth of micro groove precisely, the Figure 9 shows the variation of the gap size S with cathode should be designed so that the distribution of different pulse durations. Results were computed from a current should be uniform across its surface. PECM program written by Fortran. When the applied voltage V0 varies for a given short pulse duration, this 4. PECM process model to predict the machining depth is developed using an analysis of material removal indicates the control the groove depth is easier with process. Combined electrolyte conductivity, jc, which pulse current than DC current. For example, when contains both resistance of mechanical system, Rm, and son 10 s, DS 3.8 lm, DS 4.5 lm, DS 5.1 lm for electrolyte, Re is used to develop this model. V0 8 V, V0 10 V, V0 12 V, which is much smaller

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