Micromachines (Aug 2021)

High-Precision Fabrication of Micro Monolithic Tungsten Ball Tips via Arc Discharge and the Taguchi Method

  • Zhen-Ying Cheng,
  • Pan Yao,
  • Yong-Jun Wang,
  • Chen Chen,
  • Li-Juan Chen,
  • Rui-Jun Li,
  • Qiang-Xian Huang

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3390/mi12091042
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 12, no. 9
p. 1042

Abstract

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A micro ball tip is a core component of high precision coordinate measuring machines. The present micro ball tips cannot satisfy the high-precision measuring requirements of high aspect ratio microstructures due to their large diameter and low accuracy. In the previous study, we fabricated a micro monolithic tungsten ball tip by using arc discharge and surface tension principles. However, the fabrication success rate of forming a micro ball tip is less than 10%. In the present study, the Taguchi method has been applied to increase the fabrication success rate, and it has increased to 57.5%. The output response is evaluated in terms of the diameter, roundness, and center offset of the tungsten probe ball tips. The smaller-the-better signal-to-noise ratio is applied to analyze the influence of various parameters. The proposed parameters can be used to increase the fabrication success rate and accuracy of the monolithic probe ball tip.

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