Study on the cutting-caused deformation of sloping-arranged nano-grooves in amorphous nickel phosphorus with nanoscale superior plasticity

Creating nanoscale grooves along sloping and curved path is significant for achieving multi-scale structured surfaces with superior surface properties. Attributed to the excellent ability to fabricate micro/nanoscale surface structures, ultra-precision diamond cutting technology is an effective method to engrave sloping-arranged nano-grooves. However, due to the tool-edge extrusion effect, the material removal behavior becomes very complicated when the tool is fed along the sloping path, consequently nano-grooves with weak stiffness are extremely prone to irregular deformation. This paper investigates the formation and cutting-caused deformation of sloping-arranged nano-grooves on amorphous nickel‑phosphorus (a-Ni-P) through mechanism analyzation, simulation, and experiments. The mechanism of nano-grooves deformation and materials residue under the non-free cutting condition is revealed. The influence of the size of the stress zone by the extrusion of the tool edge on the deformation is analyzed. What's more, the influence mechanism of direction of the sloping feed path and its slope on the deformation are investigated. Compared to extruding the long bevels of nano-grooves in the downward feed path, the tool edge extrudes the short bevels of nano-grooves in the upward feed path, making the stress zone smaller and deformation suppressed. To suppress the deformation of undulating sloping-arranged nano-grooves in the full feed path, a novel intermittent-upward feed path is proposed for fly cutting of sloping-arranged nano-grooves on a side-mounted workpiece. The proposed tool feed strategy was demonstrated to be able to improve the machining quality of the undulating sloping-arranged nano-grooves.