The miniaturization of machine components plays a very important role in the future technological development of a broad spectrum of product owing to various advantages low material cost, portability, implant, lower power consumption and higher heat transfer since their surface-to-volume ratio is very high. In particular, one of the manufacturing processes for small parts is micro-mechanical machining. Similar to macro machining processes, the micro machining process can create three dimensional parts on a micro scale with various engineering materials (i.e. metallic alloys, ceramics, plastics) using miniature tools. The micro machining processes have several unique elements such as small size tools, high spindle speed, and miniaturized machine tools.

This thesis focuses on several aspects of micro machining operations in order to improve the performance of micro machining process. The survey of the current efforts in micro-mechanical machining investigated various aspects such as current research directions, limitations, similarities and differences between macro and micro in order to understand the fundamental knowledge of micro mechanical machining.

The prediction of the joint dynamics is vital to evaluate the micro machine tool performances through its dynamics because the joint plays significant roles in the micro system's behavior because the size of joint is relatively close to the assembled system. The fastener joint dynamics are identified with the classic receptance coupling technique. The proposed method is enhanced by identifing the joint dynamics between substructures through experimental and finit lement analyse . This novel identification method increase the accuracy of the dynamic prediction of machine tool, by minimizing numerical errors and the problems associated with convergence. Various experimntal dynamics and micro cutting tests are performed to verify the proposed methods.

The fragility of micro tools would require the operation to be monitored to avoid excessive forces and vibrations that will significantly affect the overall paii and tool quality. In addition, the high rotational speeds represent high bandwidth requirements to measure micro cutting forces. In this thesis, a miniaturized milling system, and the accurate high bandwidth measurement of micro cutting forces using a 3-axis miniature force sen or and accelerometers are also developed in order to monitor the micro cutting forces accurately. The developed miniaturized milling system can fabricate micro parts with various engineering materials and micro tools within an 8 ?m resolution movement and an 80,000 rpm spindle speed. Since the inherent dynamics of the workpiece and overall machine tool affects the frequency bandwidth of sensors, the expanded Kalman filter is employed to compensate for unwanted dynamics by fusing the force sensor and accelerometer signals to increase the frequency bandwidth of the micro cutting forces measurement system.