SOME STUDIES ON CHEMICAL MACHINING OF GLASS

Abstract

The huge potential of glass as a modern engineering material can be further tapped provided its machinability can be improved to predictable accuracy. There are several techniques by which•glass can be machined e.g. by sand blasting, abrasive jet machining, ECDM (by control of hydrogen bubble concentration), ultra-sonic machining, laser beam machining, ion beam sputter machining or by chemical machining. Machining of glass to very shallow depth (e.g. 50 Mm) and width is gaining, importance in the present technological context for the precision manufacture of products like neural filters, micro-liquefiers, etc. The other machining methods except chemical machining require high cost tooling and pose difficulty to be used in economic mass production. However, the main problems associated with chemical machining of glass are i) Difficulty to maintain process accuracy. ii) Risk of health hazards, especially at higher concentration of etchant The study, therefore,. was aimed at i) Fabricate aglow-cost chemical machining pilot set-up. ~ 0.• Li) Generation of priori information through theoretical analysis and conducting pilot experiments. iii) Conducting further experiments applying the principles of "Design of