With the aim of reducing the use of finite resources and cost in the production of automobile parts, the technology for replacing grinding processes with metal-cutting ones is developing. Compared with grinding processes, the reuse of metal chips resulting from cutting is possible, and the amount of water consumed is also smaller. Moreover, metal-cutting equipment has the advantage of being less expensive than grinding equipment. For materials having a hardness of 60 HRC or more, continuous cutting is possible with CBN tools and ceramic tools in conventional single-point cutting processes. However, in interrupted cutting of the spline outer diameter of transmission parts, there is the problem that tool life is shortened by the continuous impulse force acting on the tool cutting edge. To avoid that problem, the oblique cutting method in interrupted cutting is applied, and the effect on tool life is investigated. The results showed that tool life was substantially extended compared with conventional single-point cutting.

For heat transfer performance improvement at boiling area, minute unevenness with the various shapes to the generating surface is proposed in pool boiling. Growth of an air bubble influences big by the minute difference in the shapes. So it's the current state to predict correct heat transfer characteristics by an experiment. The purposes of this study are the specification of the minute unevenness which reduces nuclear boiling arrival and consideration of the mass production method. This report is concerned with function surface creation method which improves heat transfer characteristics and building of an evaluation system, and will be reported about those results.

Commercial TiCN coatings generally consist of various multi-layer structures to improve their performance, and thus a technique to measure the mechanical properties of the TiCN multi-layer coating should be developed. In the present study, the micro slurry-jet erosion (MSE) test, developed by the authors, was applied to evaluate the properties of TiCN single-layer and multi-layer coatings. Specimens of TiCN single-layer and multi-layer coatings with a varying C content were deposited on high speed steel substrate by a cathodic arc method. The TiCN multi-layer coating was made with a stepwise increasing C content toward to the surface, by means of controlling the flow rate of N₂ and CH₄ during the deposition. The MSE tests were conducted by impacting slurry-jet containing 1.2 μm alumina particles perpendicular to the specimen surface, the erosion depth variation on the eroded surfaces was measured, and finally the erosion rates were calculated from the measured data. The most important findings in the present study: for the TiCN s ingle-layer coatings, their erosion rates became remarkably smaller with increasing C content due to the increase of hardness; for the TiCN multi-layer coating, the variation of the erosion rate as a function of depth from the surface was similar but more gradual than the expected stepwise variation based on the measured data of TiCN single-layer coatings with varying C contents.

In order to improve machining efficiency, it is required to recognize machining status and optimize cutting conditions. Cutting force is meaningful information to recognize machining status. In the instantaneous rigid force model, which is the most popular model for milling force prediction, milling force is calculated based on the geometrical intersection between cutting edge and workpiece for each feed per tooth. In this model, both of static tool deflection and tool dynamic vibration are not considered. In order to overcome this problem, a new high speed computational algorithm in our voxel based milling process simulation is proposed. The proposed algorithm permits to consider both of static tool deflection and tool dynamic vibration in our voxel based milling process simulation. In the proposed algorithm, the intersection between cutting edge and workpiece is calculated in each minute time interval or minute tool rotational angle interval. Furthermore, the proposed algorithm permits to shorten the computational time of detecting removal voxels to calculate uncut chip thickness discretely. Therefore, high precision analysis can be performed in minute space resolution. The effectiveness of the proposed algorithm is validated by experimental 3-axis milling tests. Predicted milling forces under several cutting conditions have good agreement with the measured milling forces.

Chemical mechanical polishing (CMP) is used in a wide range of processes in semiconductor production. However, the polishing mechanism of CMP is not completely understood. The behavior of the abrasive particles and chemical species in the slurry is believed to play a critical role in the polishing mechanism. Therefore, in this study, we observed the slurry flow occurring in the polishing pad asperities experimentally. Because in situ observation of the slurry flow is exceptionally difficult, an enlarged visualization model of the pad asperities was made, based on the scaling laws of fluid dynamics. A refractive index matching technique and a particle suspension method were applied to visualize the scaled-up slurry flow. As a result, the circulation flows in the vertical direction to the wafer surface have been observed at the openings of the pad pores, and at the valleys of the undulations formed by the pad conditioning. The size of the biggest circulation flow observed in this study is approximately 200 μm. This result suggests that, similar to the pad pores, the valleys of undulations of the pad have the function of aiding the slurry transport to the entire wafer surface.

In the present research, wafer behavior during double-sided lapping was investigated. The wafer behavior was estimated based on double-sided lapping simulation, which was developed by authors. In the simulation, contact between the wafer, an upper plate, a lower plate and a carrier is considered, and the wafer behavior is calculated based on equilibria of the forces and the moments applied to the wafer. The behavior was estimated under several conditions, and the effects of lapping conditions to the wafer behavior was discussed. The variation of rotational speed of the wafer is larger in the condition where the rotational speed of the carrier is larger. The wafer rotates with the carrier without slip under the condition where COFs against the upper plate and the lower plate are different. And, the variation of the rotational speed of the wafer is smaller when COF against the carrier is smaller. Furthermore, lapping velocity, which is proportional to material removal rate, was calculated with the estimated wafer behavior, and it was confirmed that better flatness could be achieved under the condition where COF against the upper plate is same as COF against the lower plate and COF against the carrier is small.

In this paper, a novel analysis method using polynomial chaos methos is proposed for analyzing the accuracy of the endpoint position of N-DoF manipulators with uncertainty. The effectiveness of the proposed method is verified through an analysis example. The proposed method models a manipulator by using probabilistic models. The endpoint position is expressed as a probabilistic distribution by the modeling. The probabilistic distribution is calculated by polynomial chaos method. From the distribution, a measurement for accuracy of the endpoint position of the manipulator is calculated. To verify the effectiveness of the proposed method, the accuracy of the endpoint position of a double link manipulators with uncertainty in the length of the arms is analyzed by the proposed method. We confirmed that the analysis result by the proposed method is equal to the analytical solution of the manipulator with sufficient accuracy.

In industry, Turbo molecular pump (TMP) is utilized to make highly vacuum in the chamber. The rotor supported by the active magnetic bearings (AMB) in TMP vibrates caused by the unbalance of the mass of the rotor. This vibration is transmitted to casing of TMP and gives harmful influence on the device attached to TMP. As methods to suppress this vibration, Peak-of-Gain Control (JIS B 0913-1, Unbalance Force Counteracting Control: UFCC), Automatic Balancing System (JIS B 0913-1, Unbalance Force Rejection Control: UFRC) and Phase-Variable Control (PVC) have been reported. However, these methods have been applied to only radial direction of the rotor even though vibration with same cycle as unbalance vibration occurs in axial direction of the rotor. Additionally, conventional unbalance vibration compensator can not be applied to the three axes bearing which supports the rotor by AMB in only axial direction. Accordingly, in this paper, unbalance vibration compensators for axial direction are proposed. Through experiments, the proposed compensators are applied to the axial direction and exhibit effect of suppression of unbalance vibration.