Laminated fabrication of 3D micro-electrode based on WEDM and thermal diffusion welding

•This paper proposed and adopted micro-DLOM to fabricate 3D micro-electrodes.•The proper process parameters of micro-DLOM were obtained.•3D micro-electrodes were used in micro-EDM to fabricate 3D micro-structures efficiently. 3D micro-electrode which is used in micro-electrical discharge machining (micro-EDM) is difficult to be fabricated. This paper proposes a method of micro-double-staged laminated object manufacturing (micro-DLOM) to fabricate 3D micro-electrode, and verifies its feasibility through the fabrication of 3D micro-electrode. Firstly, under machining parameters of 10μs pulse width, 40μs pulse interval, 0.42A wire cutting current and 80V voltage, 100μm-thick Cu foils were cut to obtain multi-layer 2D micro-structures. Then, under the process parameters of 850°C thermal diffusion temperature, 10h thermal diffusion time and 100N forces, multi-layer 2D micro-structures were connected together by vacuum pressure thermal diffusion welding to fit the 3D micro-electrode. Finally, based on the above-mentioned studies, three kinds of 3D micro-electrodes were fabricated by micro-DLOM process and the 3D micro-electrodes were applied in micro-EDM to process 3D micro-structures. Compared with the scanning 3D micro-EDM process, 3D micro-electrode only requires up and down reciprocating method to process 3D micro-structure, which has high processing efficiency.