Generation of uniform micro-textured structures by two-dimensional modulation fly-cutting

Micro-textured structures are widely applied in the fields of aerospace, military and medical etc. because of their unique properties such as self-cleaning, structural color and antibacterial effects. The traditional fast tool servo technology is believed to be an ideal machining method for the fabrication of micro-textured structures, however, its frequency response is limited by the varied linear velocity along the radial direction of workpieces, which make it difficult to machine uniform micro-textured structures. In this paper, a novel two-dimensional modulation fly-cutting system is developed to machine uniform micro-textured structures. In the machining system, the principal cutting motion is generated by a fly-cutting while a sinusoidal excitation motion as the assistive modulation is generated by a two-dimensional vibration platform. The two-dimensional vibration platform can apply excitation both in the x- and z-directions to the workpiece. By changing the excitation frequency, tool rotation radius and feed rate in X-axis, the corresponding optimal offset angle, length-width ratio and density of micro-textured structures can be obtained. Also, uniform concave-convex micro-textured structures are fabricated further by two-dimensional modulation of the principal cutting motion. According to the experimental results, uniform concave-convex micro-textured structures have good quality, which proves that the present machining method is effective. The present study provides an effective machining method for fabrication of micro-textured structures, and also serves as a reference for the fabrication of other similar micro-textured structures.