When using foil queue microelectrodes (FQ-microelectrodes) for micro electrical discharge machining (micro-EDM), the processed results of each foil microelectrode (F-microelectrode) can be stacked to construct three-dimensional (3D) microstructures. However, the surface of the 3D microstructure obtained from this process will have a step effect, which has an adverse effect on the surface quality and shape accuracy of the 3D microstructures. To focus on this problem, this paper proposes to use FQ-microelectrodes with tapered structures for micro-EDM, thereby eliminating the step effect on the 3D microstructure’s surface. By using a low-speed wire EDM machine, a copper foil with thickness of 300 μm was processed to obtain a FQ-microelectrode in which each of the F-microelectrodes has a tapered structure along its thickness direction. These tapered structures could effectively improve the construction precision of the 3D microstructure and effectively eliminate the step effect. In this paper, the effects of the taper angle and the number of microelectrodes on the step effect were investigated. The experimental results show that the step effect on the 3D microstructure’s surface became less evident with the taper angle and the number of F-microelectrodes increased. Finally, under the processing voltage of 120 V, pulse width of 1 μs and pulse interval of 10 μs, a FQ-microelectrode (including 40 F-microelectrodes) with 10° taper angle was used for micro-EDM. The obtained 3D microstructure has good surface quality and the step effect was essentially eliminated.

中文翻译：

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在Micro-EDM中应用具有锥形结构的箔队列微电极以消除3D微结构表面上的阶梯效应

当使用箔排微电极（FQ-微电极）进行微放电加工（micro-EDM）时，可以堆叠每个箔微电极（F-微电极）的处理结果，以构建三维（3D）微结构。然而，从该过程获得的3D微结构的表面将具有阶梯效应，这对3D微结构的表面质量和形状精度具有不利影响。为了解决这个问题，本文提出将具有锥形结构的FQ微电极用于微EDM，从而消除对3D微结构表面的台阶效应。通过使用低速电火花线切割机，加工厚度为300μm的铜箔，从而得到FQ-微电极，其中每个F-微电极在其厚度方向上具有锥形结构。这些锥形结构可以有效地提高3D微结构的构造精度，并有效消除台阶效应。本文研究了锥角和微电极数量对台阶效应的影响。实验结果表明，随着锥角的增加，F-微电极的数量增加，对3D微结构表面的阶梯效应变得不那么明显。最后，在120 V的处理电压，1μs的脉冲宽度和10μs的脉冲间隔下，将具有10°锥角的FQ微电极（包括40 F微电极）用于微EDM。所获得的3D微结构具有良好的表面质量，并且基本上消除了台阶效应。