Vibration assisted cutting (VAC) is one of the promising methods for precision machining, which has been normally equipped with piezoelectric materials. In this paper, a feasibility of applying magnetostrictive materials to VAC as a cutting device instead of piezoelectric materials was studied. For this, the vibrational characteristics of a magnetostrictive material was investigated with respect to a coil design, a preload, and the effects of a biasing and an exciting magnetic fields. The output strain of a magnetostrictive material is restricted due to an increasing inductive impedance as the exciting frequency increases and the heat of coil, etc. Through the experimental results, it was found that the biasing and the exciting magnetic field affected the output performance significantly but not the preload. In conclusion, the magnetostrictive material could be used only in the low frequency range but not a good candidate for high frequency actuating application.
