Taper-cutting experiments are important means of exploring the nano-cutting mechanisms of hard and brittle materials. Under current cutting conditions, the brittle-ductile transition depth (BDTD) of a material can be obtained through a taper-cutting experiment. However, taper-cutting experiments mostly rely on ultra-precision machining tools, which have a low efficiency and high cost, and it is thus difficult to realize in situ measurements. For taper-cut surfaces, three-dimensional microscopy and two-dimensional image calculation methods are generally used to obtain the BDTDs of materials, which have a great degree of subjectivity, leading to low accuracy. In this paper, an integrated system-processing platform is designed and established in order to realize the processing, measurement, and evaluation of taper-cutting experiments on hard and brittle materials. A spectral confocal sensor is introduced to assist in the assembly and adjustment of the workpiece. This system can directly perform taper-cutting experiments rather than using ultra-precision machining tools, and a small white light interference sensor is integrated for in situ measurement of the three-dimensional topography of the cutting surface. A method for the calculation of BDTD is proposed in order to accurately obtain the BDTDs of materials based on three-dimensional data that are supplemented by two-dimensional images. The results show that the cutting effects of the integrated platform on taper cutting have a strong agreement with the effects of ultra-precision machining tools, thus proving the stability and reliability of the integrated platform. The two-dimensional image measurement results show that the proposed measurement method is accurate and feasible. Finally, microstructure arrays were fabricated on the integrated platform as a typical case of a high-precision application.
Bactericidal surfaces: An emerging 21st-century ultra-precision manufacturing and materials puzzle