Ultrasonic Machining of Ceramic Substrates

If you haven’t considered ultrasonic machining for your thin and thick film ceramic substrate designs, you may be missing out on an opportunity to:

• Reduce your total solution cost
• Improve your production yields
• Eliminate post-processing steps
• Increase the reliability of your designs.

Bullen machines ceramic substrates for defense and aerospace clients involved in high-reliability telecommunication applications. For this and other critical applications, customers count on Bullen for precision-machined ceramic substrates.

Advantages of Ultrasonic Machining

Ultrasonic machining offers many advantages over conventional laser machining of ceramic substrates.

Advantages of ultrasonic machining include:

• Lower Total Cost/Higher Yield
• Non-thermal, low-MRR process creates no HAZ, and little or no subsurface damage. As a result, no post-machining polishing or annealing processes are required to relieve residual stress and slag caused by laser machining
• With Bullen's unique ultrasonic machining technology, the chemical and physical properties of your substratematerial remain unchanged, increasing reliability
• Features sizes not possible with laser machining on thicker substrates are possible with precision ceramic machining from Bullen
• Machined features have straight side walls and don't exhibit hole roll-off that is customary with laser machining resulting in higher feature densities on your thin or thick film ceramic substrates

Materials That Can be Ultrasonically Machined

Materials that Bullen can ultrasonically machine include:

• Alumina substrates
• AlN substrates
• SiC substrates
• Fused silica substrates
• Thin film ceramic substrates
• Thick film ceramic substrates

Capabilities of Ultrasonic Machining

Using ultrasonic maching Bullen can machine:

• Machined slots
• Round, square, and odd-shaped thru-holes and cavities

SEM of a 0.64 mm hole ultrasonically machined in an alumina substrate.

This information has been sourced, reviewed and adapted from materials provided by Bullen Ultrasonics Inc.

For more information on this source, please visit Bullen Ultrasonics Inc.