Conventional lapping tools with simple uniform textures and defective morphological designs exhibit inadequate abrasive and fluid distribution greatly restricting machining quality. This article designs a novel fixed abrasive lapping pad with a bidirectional involute groove structure based on flow field simulation and investigates its lapping performance, optimizing its geometric structure dimensions by Taguchi design. Lapping experiments were conducted to compare a hexagonal boss-structured pad and a circular boss-structured pad under different speed ratios, workpiece radius, and eccentric distances. Optimization results showed that the new-structured fixed abrasive lapping pad achieved optimal flow performance when configured with a base radius of 25 mm, a groove depth of 1.5 mm, a groove width of 2.5 mm, and 10 unidirectional grooves. Comparative tests indicated the new fixed abrasive lapping pad reduced surface roughness of K9 glass by 20%, 21%, and 25% versus circular boss structured, and by 48%, 52%, and 50% versus hexagonal boss structured, under different speed ratios, workpiece radii, and eccentric distances. Additionally, new structured features provide highly stable machining efficiency, with material removal rate fluctuations of 22% (speed ratio), 7% (workpiece radius), and 36% (eccentric distance). Relative to boss-structured pads, the proposed new-structured pad yields a lower surface roughness under the same processing parameters for difficult-to-machine materials.
Zhang et al. (2026) studied this question.