Electro-magnetically enforced rotary barrel finishing for fabricating spherically contoured quartz crystal blanks

Spherically contoured AT-cut rectangular quartz crystal resonators have been fabricated by electro-magnetically enforced rotary barrel finishing system. Shape and frequency responses of the fabricated blanks have also been measured and compared with those of the blanks fabricated without using the electro-magnets. In previous work by the authors, the fixed abrasive method, in which abrasive papers are used instead of powder abrasives, was introduced as a new rotary barrel finishing method for fabricating the spherically contoured rectangular quartz crystal blanks. By adopting the fixed abrasive method, accurate shape transferring, dustless clean working environment, and short turnaround time has been realized. In this paper, in order to further shorten the process time, electro-magnets are used for generating additional machining pressure. As a result, the process time required for complete shape transferring has been decreased to 67% of the turnaround time obtained by previous work.