Manufacturing of a micro probe using supersonic aided electrolysis process

In this paper, a practical micromachining technology was applied for the fabrication of a micro probe using a complex nontraditional machining process. A series process was combined to machine tungsten carbide rods from original dimension. The original dimension of tungsten carbide rods was 3 mm; the rods were ground to a fixed-dimension of 50 mum using precision grinding machine in first step. And then, the rod could be machined to a middle-dimension of 20 mum by electrolysis. A final desired micro dimension can be achieved using supersonic aided electrolysis. High-aspect-ratio of micro tungsten carbide rod was easily obtained by this process. Surface roughness of the sample with supersonic aided agitation was compared with that with no agitation in electrolysis. The machined surface of the sample is very smooth due to ionized particles of anode could be removed by supersonic aided agitation during electrolysis. Deep micro holes can also be achieved by the machined high-aspect-ratio tungsten carbide rod using EDM process. A micro probe of a ball shape at the end was processed by proposed supersonic aided electrolysis machining process.