Author:

Abstract:

Potassium dihydrogen phosphate (KH2PO4 or KDP) crystal is an optical crystal and it has been widely used as frequency multiplication elements in inertial confinement fusion (ICF) research. Milling of the KDP crystal with a micro ball-end is difficult to achieve high-quality machined surface due to the soft-brittle property of the KDP crystal. The cutting force has been measured in the experiment and the Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) algorithm has been used to filter out the noises in the measured cutting force. The influence of the cutting parameters on the peak-valley value of the cutting force and the surface quality has been investigated. Based on the analysis of the P-V thrust force and the surface roughness Ra with respect to the cutting parameters, a relatively moderate feed rate and a large spindle speed are recommended for the micro-milling of KDP crystal.