The mechanical grinding processes is the most popular way to fabricate the end face of optical fibers, although there are some other methods like chemical etching and leaser machining. In cases of fabricate the wedge type and wedge-cone type optical fiber end faces, the mechanical grinding is the typical way. Professor Y. C. Tsai¡¦s research group has successfully fabricated the optical fiber with elliptical-cone-type end-face in a single grinding process by adopting a mechanism with eccentric mass on the commercial optical fiber grinding machine. In this study, a torque motor is equipped on the commercial optical fiber grinding machine for controlling the normal pressure between the optical fiber and the grinding film during the grinding process. While the optical fiber rotating, the normal pressure, as well as the material removed rate and the final shape of the optical fiber, can be controlled in different periodical mode shapes by applying different voltages with different periodical mode shapes. The merit of this system is its capability of fabricating fiber with elliptical-cone-shape and polygon-cone-shape (polyhedron-tip) end faces in a single grinding process that will increase the efficiency and the accuracy of grinding. It is believed the grinding machine system developed in this study can be successfully applied for fabricating the optical fiber lenses as well as different types of micro probes for other applications.

Due to the explosive improvement of micro machining technology, many kinds of meso-scale products and parts are developed. There are two techniques, CMM (Coordinate Measuring Machine) and SPM (Scanning Probe Microscopy), commonly used to measure the profile of meso-scale products. However, both of these methods have their own strengths and weaknesses in that scale. The CMM can¡¦t be precise and accurate; while the SPM measurement system will be a time-consuming process. The micro scale CMM measurement system with micro spherical probes would be suitable for measuring meso-scale objects. In this study, equipments are built to fabricate the micro spherical probes. The glass optical fiber is selected as the material to fabricate the probes. The heating-pulling method and arc fusion method are selected as the fabrication process. The commercial equipments are available for fabricating micropipette and NSOM (Near-field Scanning Optical Microscopy) probes. However, most of these commercial equipments are expensive, and the heating area is too small to fit our study. In this study, the gas heater is used to replace the laser power as a heat source. A vertical pulling mechanism is developed to pull the optical fiber. Moreover, this study uses Taguchi method to reduce the number of experimental runs and find the suitable parameters for fabrication. The straight-circular-cone-type probe and the bent-circular-cone-type probe can be fabricated at the same time. The radius of the probe tip can be smaller than 0.5£gm for NSOM. In addition, the heating-pulling mechanism can reduce the diameter of optical fiber from £p125£gm to less than £p50£gm for different purposes. An arc discharge machine is also developed to melt the cleaved end-face of the prob. The heating-pulling mechanism and arc discharge machine developed in this study are successfully applied in fabricating different types of probe ends, £p20~125£gm hemispherical end-face and £p50~300£gm spherical end-face for example, for different applications.

Since micro machining technologies are dramatically improved, many kinds of meso-to-micro scale products are developed. The Coordinate Measuring Machine(CMM) and the Scanning Probe Microscope(SPM) are the most commonly used instrument for precision measurement. To acquire geometric characteristic of products in meso scale, the CMM is not adequate due to the minimum diameter of ruby-ball head probes are 300 to 500£gm; while the SPM will be a time-consuming process. Thus, proper probes for meso-scale coordinate measuring machines are necessarily developed. The commercial fusion splicers are available to fabricate glass probes with spherical head. However, the commercial fusion splicers are expensive and the fiber clamps can not fit the diameter of probe stylus in this study. Therefore, instruments are implemented to fabricate the glass probe with spherical head for the meso-scale coordinate measuring machine. The

Nowadays, the need for three-dimensional miniaturized components is increasing in many areas, such as electronics, biomedics, aerospace and defence, etc. To support the demands, various micro-scale fabrication techniques have been further introduced and developed over the last decades, including micro-electric-mechanical technologies (MEMS and LIGA), laser ablation, and miniature machine tools (mMTs). Each of these techniques has its own benefits, however miniature machine tools are superior to any others in enabling three-dimensional complex geometry with high relative accuracy, and the capability of dealing with a wide range of mechanical materials. Thus, mMTs are emerging as a promising fabrication process. In this work, various researches have been carried out based on the mMTs. The thesis presents micro-machining, in particular, micro-milling force model and three relevant subsystems for miniature machine tools (mMTs), to enhance machining productivity/efficiency and dimensional accuracy of machined parts. The comprehensive force model that predicts micro-endmilling dynamics has been developed. Unlike conventional macro-machining, the cutting mechanism in micro-machining is complex with high level of non-linearity due to the combined effects of edge radius, size, and minimum chip thickness effect, etc., resulting in no chip formation when the chip thickness is below the minimum chip forming thickness. Instead, part of the work material deforms plastically under the edge of a tool and the rest of the material recovers elastically. The developed force model for micro-endmilling is effective to understand the micro-machining process. As a result, the micro-endmilling force model is helpful to improve the quality of machined parts. In addition, three relevant subsystems which deliver maximum machining productivity and efficiency are also introduced. Firstly, ultrasonic atomization-based cutting fluid application system is introduced. During machining, cutting fluid is required at the cutting zone for cooling and lubricating the cutting tool against the workpiece. Improper cutting fluid application leads to significantly increased tool wear, and which results in overall poor machined parts quality. For the micro-machining, conventional cooling methods using high pressure cutting fluid is not viable due to the potential damage and deflection of weak micro-cutting tools. The new atomization-based cutting fluids application technique has been proven to be quite effective in machinability due to its high level of cooling and lubricating. Secondly, an acoustic emission (AE)-based tool tip positioning method is introduced. Tool tip setting is one of the most important factors to be considered in the CNC machine tool. Since several tools with different geometries are employed during machining, overall dimensional accuracy of the machined parts are determined by accurate coordinates of each tool tip. In particular, tool setting is more important due to micro-scale involved in micro-machining. The newly developed system for tool tip positioning determines the accurate coordinates of the tool tip through simple and easy manipulation. At last, with the advance of the 3D micro-fabrication technologies, the machinable miniaturized components are getting complex in geometry, leading to increased demand on dimensional quality control. However, the system development for micro-scale parts is slow and difficult due to complicated detection devices, algorithm, and fabrication of a micro-probe. Consequently, the entire dimensional probing system tends to become bulky and expensive. A new AE-based probing system with a wire-based probe was developed to address this issue with reduced cost and size, and ease of application. / Graduate