The Development of the Stress-Free Polishing System Based on the Positioning Error Analysis for the Deterministic Polishing of Jet Electrochemical Machining.

Deterministic polishing based on jet electrochemical machining (Jet-ECM) is a stress-free machining method for low-rigidity and ultra-precision workpieces. The nozzle is equivalent to a special tool in deterministic polishing, and the workpiece material is removed using the mechanism of electrochemical dissolution at the position where the nozzle passes. By precisely regulating the nozzle's movement speed and dwell time, the quantity of material removed from the workpiece at a designated position can be finely adjusted. With this mechanism, the improvement of the workpiece shape accuracy can be achieved by planning the nozzle trajectory and nozzle movement speed. However, due to the positioning errors of the polishing device, the actual position of the nozzle may deviate from the theoretical position, resulting in errors in material removal amount, which affects the accuracy and stability of the polishing process. This study established a mathematical model to analyze the influence of nozzle positioning errors in deterministic polishing based on Jet-ECM. This model has been used to design a specific deterministic polishing device based on Jet-ECM. With the proposed deterministic polishing device, the surface shape of the workpiece is converged. The surface peak-to-valley (PV) value of the φ 50 mm workpiece (valid dimensions = 90% of the central region) indicated that the shape error of the surface was reduced from 2.67 µm to 1.24 µm in 34 min. The power spectral density (PSD) method was used to evaluate the height distribution and height characteristics of the workpiece surface. The results show that the low frequency spatial error is reduced significantly after processing. This study improves the accuracy of the stress-free deterministic polishing methods and further expands the use of deterministic polishing in industry.

Process Chain for Ultra-Precision and High-Efficiency Manufacturing of Large-Aperture Silicon Carbide Aspheric Mirrors.

A large-aperture silicon carbide (SiC) aspheric mirror has the advantages of being light weight and having a high specific stiffness, which is the key component of a space optical system. However, SiC has the characteristics of high hardness and multi-component, which makes it difficult to realize efficient, high-precision, and low-defect processing. To solve this problem, a novel process chain combining ultra-precision shaping based on parallel grinding, rapid polishing with central fluid supply, and magnetorheological finishing (MRF) is proposed in this paper. The key technologies include the passivation and life prediction of the wheel in SiC ultra-precision grinding (UPG), the generation and suppression mechanism of pit defects on the SiC surface, deterministic and ultra-smooth polishing by MRF, and compensation interference detection of the high-order aspheric surface by a computer-generated hologram (CGH). The verification experiment was conducted on a Ø460 mm SiC aspheric mirror, whose initial surface shape error was 4.15 µm in peak-to-valley (PV) and a root-mean-square roughness (Rq) of 44.56 nm. After conducting the proposed process chain, a surface error of RMS 7.42 nm and a Rq of 0.33 nm were successfully obtained. Moreover, the whole processing cycle is only about 216 h, which sheds light on the mass production of large-aperture silicon carbide aspheric mirrors.

Surface Quality Control Strategy of Aspherical Mold Based on Screw Feed Polishing of Small Polishing Tool.

For small aspherical molds, it is difficult for the existing polishing method to take into account the correction of the surface error and the control of the uniformity of the surface roughness (SR) distribution, because the polishing tool is always larger than the small mold. Therefore, we used viscoelastic polyester fiber cloth to wrap the small steel ball as a polishing tool to adapt to the surface shape change of the aspherical mold, and designed a semi-flexible small polishing disc tool with microstructure, which can better adapt to the curvature change of aspherical surface and obtain better SR Ra. At the same time, a combined polishing method of constant speed and variable speed for screw feed was proposed to improve the uniformity of SR distribution in the paper. Then, a series of theoretical analysis and experimental verification were carried out in this paper to predict the tool influence function (TIF) of the two polishing tools and the effectiveness of the combined polishing method. In the experiment, a TIF bandwidth of about 0.46 mm was obtained with a small spherical polishing tool, which favors the surface shape correction of the small aspherical mold. The experiment of uniform removal with a small polishing disc tool was carried out to quickly reduce the Ra. Finally, the surface quality of the aspherical mold was effectively improved, combined with the constant speed and variable speed polishing modes of screw feed of the small spherical polishing tool and the smoothing effect of the small polishing disc tool. The peak valley (PV) of two small aspherical molds with an optical effective diameter less than 13 mm converged from 0.3572 µm and 0.2075 µm to 0.1282 µm and 0.071 µm, respectively. At the same time, the SR dispersion coefficient was reduced from 27.9% and 41.6% to 14.2% and 12.7%, respectively. The study provides a good solution for the surface quality control of small aspherical molds.