Experimental stress analysis of glass cutting using a non-rigid cutting mechanism

A non-rigid cutting mechanism was developed to apply a technique to control the normal cutting force during the fabrication of micro-grooves. Although this mechanism has been mainly used for ductile materials, several experiments on glass were performed; as result the fabrication of crack-free micro-scale grooves was achieved. The photoelastic analysis was applied to observe the internal stress field on the material during the cutting process comparing the non-rigid mechanism and a rigid tool-holder. The critical cutting depth using this mechanism was determined in approximately 2.5 μm and some of the cutting conditions were defined in order to achieve ductile mode cutting.