Design and Development of A Rotating Core Based Magnetorheological Finishing Process for Different External Cylindrical Surfaces

Abstract

The external surface finishing of cylindrical components at the nano-meter level with good surface characteristics is highly demanded in today s industries for improving their operative functionalities. In industries, mostly traditional finishing process like grinding is used to finish the external surface of the various cylindrical components because of their easy accessibility and low making cost. Grinding makes use of a rigid bonded abrasive wheel. This rigid bonded abrasive wheel gives non-controllable finishing forces over the external surface of the cylindrical workpiece. Owing to this, sometimes the defects get produced like heat affected zone, micro-cracks, microstructural changes, folded metals, etc. on the final finished surface. Control over finishing forces is of great concern for achieving productive and defect-free components. Therefore, there is a mandatory requirement of the advanced finishing processes with controlled forces to finish the external surface of the cylindrical components for enhancing their operational life in real time applications. The finished surface using the advanced finishing processes has several benefits like close tolerance design, reduction in wear, friction losses and increase in product service life, etc. From the literature review, it has been found that very less work is done in fine finishing of the external cylindrical surfaces with the advanced finishing processes. Magnetic abrasive finishing (MAF) is the process that has been used to finish the cylindrical external surfaces. But MAF is used more effectively only to finish the hard material cylindrical surfaces. MAF process makes use of mostly a mixture of magnetic iron and abrasive particles as the magnetic abrasive brush. This may generate a lack of flowability and friction on the surface of ductile workpieces. As compared to the magnetic abrasive finishing, the magnetorheological (MR) finishing process has been found more flexible with its finishing medium as MR polishing fluid.