Cutting fluids have some drawbacks, like health hazards, extra manufacturing cost and environmental contamination. To decrease the disadvantages of using cutting fluids, conventional cutting is a better choice. However, conventional cutting has no advantages of using cutting fluids, such as lubrication. Therefore, vibration assisted cutting (VAC) is a new technology to achieve both purposes of the above machining techniques. Hence, the goal of this study focuses on the mechanical performance of vibration assisted grinding (VAG) for micro grinding of SKD61 steel based on tool life and surface finish. In this study, it is observed that chatter happens under VAG in the condition of feed 5.76 £gm/rev. Surface roughness (Ra) for the condition of feed 1.92 £gm/rev is better than that of 5.76 £gm/rev. The best surface finish is 0.05 £gm in this study when the feed is 1.92 £gm/rev. Spindle speed does not have significant effect on surface roughness in this study. However, the tool life is short under high spindle speed (35000rpm). Experimental results show that tool life will be prolonged two-thirds for VAG combined with MQL. As changing the amplitude of vibration (for a fixed frequency of 9 kHz) , the larger the amplitude, the better the surface roughness.

Vibration assisted cutting (VAC) is a new metal machining technique in recent years, where high-frequency and low-amplitude vibrations are imposed to the cutting tool or the workpiece. It has many advantages than conventional cutting (CC), especially improvements in surface finish and tool life. Nowadays, the use of VAC is a good strategy for micro-machining due to long tool life and high product dimension accuracy. This study presents an experimental investigation of the VAC in micro milling. The tool wear, surface roughness, and burr formation are investigated for different cutting parameters under conventional and vibration assisted cutting. When the vibration speed is higher than 3 times of the cutting speed, the tool life can be prolonged in this study. The experimental results show that VAC process has better surface finish (43.51% reduction in value) compared to that in CC, when the cutting conditions are feed of 4 £gm/rev and cutting speed of 3.39 m/min. It is also found that VAC can diminish the formation of burr formation. By introducing MQL to VAC, the tool life is extended because the MQL could reduce the friction between the tool and workpiece.