In hybrid laser-electrochemical micromachining, both laser and electrochemical process energies act along the same machining axis and thus both influence material removal by their interaction. The traditional nozzle based laser assisted jet-ECM concepts require laser to be focused on workpiece surface in an electrochemical environment and are limited in aspect ratios as the nozzle stays above the workpiece surface. In this work, a hybrid tooling concept is proposed for a novel process scheme of precision hybrid laser-electrochemical micromachining. The tool serves the function of both an ECM electrode as well as a leaky-type multimode waveguide for the laser and delivers laser homogeneously together with the electrolyte on the workpiece surface without requiring laser to be focused on the workpiece surface. A precision prototype hybrid machine-tool is developed which employs short pulsed nano-second laser and micro-second pulsed voltage source for precision micromachining. For this system, ray tracing and detailed multiphysics electrochemical micromachining process simulations are carried out to demonstrate the applicability of this hybrid tooling concept and explain the shape evolution. Successful experimental realization of coaxial and concurrent application of electrochemical and laser processes is presented. Prototype tool electrodes are fabricated and experiments are carried out on an in-house developed prototype hybrid machine tool. The results reveal that the proposed hybrid tool is successfully capable of concentrating laser and electrochemical process energies simultaneously in the same machining zone. However, with the initial design of this hybrid tool, a maximum of 30–40% of laser power is available in the machining zone. Some suggestions for further research will be presented.

在混合激光-电化学微加工中，激光和电化学过程能量都沿同一加工轴作用，因此两者都通过相互作用影响材料的去除。传统的基于喷嘴的激光辅助射流ECM概念要求在电化学环境中将激光聚焦在工件表面上，并且当喷嘴停留在工件表面上方时，纵横比受到限制。在这项工作中，提出了一种混合工具概念，用于精密混合激光-电化学微加工的新型工艺方案。该工具既具有ECM电极的功能，又具有用于激光器的漏泄式多模波导的功能，并且不需要将激光聚焦在工件表面上即可将激光与电解质均匀地输送到工件表面上。开发了一种精密原型混合机床，该机床采用短脉冲纳秒激光和微秒脉冲电压源进行精密微加工。对于该系统，进行了射线追踪和详细的多物理场电化学微加工过程仿真，以证明该混合工具概念的适用性并解释形状演变。提出了电化学和激光工艺同轴并发应用的成功实验实现。制作了原型工具电极，并在内部开发的原型混合机床上进行了实验。结果表明，所提出的混合工具能够成功地在同一加工区内同时集中激光和电化学过程的能量。然而，在这种混合工具的最初设计中，加工区最多可提供30-40％的激光功率。将提出一些进一步研究的建议。