A Microcontroller-based Electrochemical Discharge Machining (ECDM) Equipment for Micro-drilling of Quartz Substrates

Electrochemical discharge machining (ECDM) is a hybrid micromachining technique used for micro -structuring quartz substrates. In the present work, we have built a microcontroller based ECDM setup for drilling quartz substrates. This setup can be effectively used to fabricate precise micro -holes using the constant velocity feed drilling technique. The tool can be moved along the Z-axis with the minimum and maximum speeds of 1 mm/hr and 50 mm/hr respectively. In order to study the effect of tool feed rate (TER) on precision improvement, micro-holes were fabricated at different tool feed rates ranging from 0.3 m/sec to 1.7 m/sec. The optimum TFR for fabricating micro -holes with the least entrance diameter, central diameter and overcut was observed to be 0.8 pm/sec. The lower TFR values (< 0.8 Fun/sec) can be used for fabricating through-holes on the substrates. A through-hole having with an aspect ratio of 2.32 with entrance and exit diameters of 820 p.m and 677 p.m respectively was fabricated at a TFR of 0.6 tm/sec.