In mechanical micro-grooving, cutter V-tip shape and wear greatly influence the generation of micro-groove on workpiece surface. Hence, cutter V-tip wear and micro-groove shape were observed in micro-grooving experiments. The objective is to understand the generation mechanism of micro-grooves. First, the high-speed steel cutter was ground to be a V-tip whose tip radius is 5 m; then a turning experiment was performed to pattern the micro-grooves on steel surface using the cutter V-tip; then the cutter tip wear and the machined micro-groove shape were measured and evaluated; finally, the effect of cutter rake angle was investigated on cutter tip wear and micro-groove quality. It is shown that the machined groove tip radius is much larger than the sharpened cutter tip radius due to the rapid cutter tip wear during grooving. On increasing cutter rake angle, the cutter V-tip wear decreases, thus leading to the improvement of form accuracy and surface roughness of machined micro-grooves are both improved.
