Ultrasonic Machining USM - Applications Advantages and Disadvantages

Applications of Ultrasonic Machining USM

• USM technology is used to the machining of brittle material and material of high hardness due to the microcracking mechanism.
• USM can be used to drill holes of straight and curved axes.
• For drilling holes in wire drawing dies.
• Threading of hard material and alloys by rotating and translating the movement of either tool or workpiece.
• Unlike other metal removal process, such as chemical, thermal processes, USM method does not harm the physical properties of workpiece and it maintains crystallographic properties. So they are used for machining of more brittle and high sensitive material.
• USM is most commonly used to machining of glass, ceramics, zirconia, precious stones, and hardened steels.
• USM allows the cutting of complex and non-uniform shape with extremely high precision. So it is used in optical and electrical application where more precise and quality cutting is required.
• Drilling circular and noncircular holes in glass and similar fragile material.
• The dentist used USM to drilling of holes teeth without creating pain.

Advantages and limitations of Ultrasonic Machining USM

• High precision machining on a wide spectrum of hard and brittle material can be done by USM, which are otherwise difficult to machine using the conventional method.
• Physical properties of machined parts will remain uniform throughout. This process can be used to machining of highly stressed components like turbine blades.
• Little or no secondary finishing process is required because no burrs are created in USM.
• Since there is no distortion of work material during the machining so it can produce high tolerance parts.
• It can be used to machining of highly fragile material such as glass, and nonconductive material where other type of machining such as electro-discharge machining and electrochemical machining is not possible.
• Ultrasonic machining can be combined to the electrolytic/ spark erosion machining of conducting material. Which results in faster machining, however, it is seldom used because of economic reason.

• Since the material removed by the microchipping, the material removal rate is very low.
• High power consumption.
• Drilling the deep hole is very problematic because the abrasive slurry movement is restricted, it will not effectively reach bottom of deep holes.
• The tooltip wears quickly due to the constant impact of abrasive particle.