High Speed Ductile Mode End Milling of Silicon with Air Blowing : Towards Achieving High Surface Finish in Machining Silicon using Conventional Machine with a High Speed Attachment

Silicon is widely used in industry due its properties such as good thermal shock resistance, good high temperature strength, creep resistance, low density, high hardness, electrical resistivity and good chemical resistivity. Silicon generally undergoes grinding, polishing and lapping processes in order to get good surface finish but in the present study the high speed end milling with ductile mode has been suggested to machine the silicon. Ductile mode machining of silicon is hard to obtain due to the brittle properties of silicon and hardness of tool materials. A brittle material will have little tendency to deform before it fractures when it is subjected to stress. Thus, right machining parameters plays an important role to obtain the ductile mode machining such as cutting speed, depth of cut and feed rate. In the previous research 'Ductile Mode Machining of Silicon Using High Speed End Milling' conducted by Mohd Dali and Muhammad Iqbal, the ductile mode machining was achieved but ductile chips produced during machining were found to be deposited on the machined silicon surface. The deposited chips were strongly bonded to the surface and could not be removed by blowing or other