A novel ultrasonic elliptical vibration cutting device based on a sandwiched and symmetrical structure

This paper presents a new ultrasonic elliptical vibration cutting (UEVC) device based on a sandwiched and symmetrical structure. The proposed UEVC device is able to work with the third resonant mode of longitudinal vibration and the sixth resonant mode of bending vibration. Also, the vibration nodes of the two resonant modes were completely superposed at the center of the flange. Therefore, the single-node fixed method was employed, which was practical and had no interference to the resonance mode of the UEVC device. The modal analysis of the designed UEVC device was performed by using finite element method (FEM). The results revealed that the modal degeneration can be realized by optimizing design parameters. Based on the optimized results, a prototype UEVC device was manufactured, and its vibration characteristics were evaluated by an impedance analyzer and a laser displacement sensor. The measurement results indicated that the resonant frequencies were close to the simulation frequencies and an elliptical trajectory was generated at the tool tip. Finally, the proposed UEVC device was integrated into an ultra-precision machine tool to confirm the feasibility of the designed UEVC in the practical application.