Fuze Micro-Electro-Mechanical System (MEMS) has become a popular subject in recent years. Studies have been done for the application of MEMS-based fuze safety and arm devices. The existing researches mainly focused on reducing the cost and volume of the fuze safety device. The reduction in volume allows more payloads and, thus, makes small-caliber rounds more effective and the weapon system more affordable. At present, MEMS-based fuze safety devices are fabricated mainly by using deep reactive ion etching (DRIE) or LIGA technology, and the fabrication process research on the fuze MEMS safety device is in the exploring stage. In this paper, a new trans-scale fabrication method of metal-based fuze MEMS safety device is presented based on UV-LIGA technology and the micro Wire-cut Electrical Discharge Machining (WEDM). The method consists of fabrication of micro-spring by UV-LIGA technology, the fabrication of mesoscale structure by WEDM, the micro assembly of micro spring and mesoscale structure. Because UV-LIGA technology and WEDM technology were introduced, the production cycle was shortened and the cost was reduced. The overall dimension of the micro-fuse safety device is 9.5×12.3×0.6 mm and the smallest dimension is 10μm. Besides, four problems in the fabrication process have been solved effectively, which is helpful for the fabrication of similar kinds of micro devices. The fabrication method presented in this paper provides a new option for the development of MEMS fuze.

In order to meet the machining demand of the metal components with micro/meso-scale, a kind of micro-fabrication method is explored by Wire-cut Electric Discharge Machining (WEDM). To find solutions for the problems of machining, a series of WEDM experiments for the micro/meso-scale structure of a thin nickel plate are carried out based on the analysis of technology regularity of WEDM. Experimental results indicate that the reasonable constraint on the discharge energy is the key to finish the machining of the metal components with micro/meso-scale. The stable machining can be achieved by adjusting discharge parameters to lower levels. The micro/meso-scale machining defects of cantilever distortion and sharp corners bending can be solved by segmented and multiple cutting accordingly. At last, some examples of complex structures machined are shown.

Some typical kinds of PCD and PCBN compacts are selected to be machined by WEDM, and a series of processing tests are taken. After machining, the surface roughness of cutting section, the processing quality of cobalt-rich interface layer and the edge of superhard material layer are measured by surface profiler and 3D microscope. The results show that processing quality is affected by superhard particle size and concentration greatly, and better processing quality can be obtained after several cutting of WEDM. The minimum sharpening allowance of PCD cutting tools can be controlled within 4~15μm after WEDM, and within 10μm for PCBN BNX20, while BZN6000 needs larger follow-up workload of sharpening.