Technology suitable for both serial and small quantity production

The application of this process is not properly to produce microparts, but to produce smooth and curved optical surfaces. It uses a ductile grinding machine tool with electrolytic in-line dressing (ELID). Current highly accurate ELID processing is only applicable to flat surfaces. It allows average roughness value down to 0.5 nm, and a dimensional accuracy of 1 to 1000 (typically 50 nm for a work piece of 50 mm) in the production of surfaces in hard metal. On this topic the position of Japanese and US research and industry is very advanced.