Development and application of additive manufactured fine grinding tools for the processing of fused silica

Abstract

The development or the improvement of production processes are necessary aspects, in order to enhance the quality and efficiency in optical manufacturing. This paper presents an approach to manufacture fine grinding tools in a very flexible and efficient way. A new filament composed of polyamide, ZrO2 particles and diamond grains is developed and used in an additive manufacturing process for tool fabrication. The resulting tools are successfully applied in an ultra-fine grinding process on fused silica samples.