Investigations of a Rotational Magnetorheological Honing Process for Improved Productivity of Nano Finished Internal Surface of Cylindrical Workpieces

Abstract

Fine finishing of the internal surface of cylindrical components such as cylindrical molds and dies, hydraulic cylinders, power steering housing cylinders, industrial choke valves, cylindrical barrels for injection moulding, etc. is highly required to improve their operational functionality. The fine finished internal surface of cylindrical components also results in resistance to wear, corrosion, pitting, oxidation, and chemical damage. In industries, mostly traditional finishing processes like grinding or honing are used to finish the internal surface of the various cylindrical components because of their easy accessibility and low making cost. The traditional internal finishing processes use rigid hard bonded abrasives for finishing the internal surface of the cylindrical workpieces. The uncontrolled finishing forces applied by these hard bonded abrasives introduce various types of defects on the final finished surface such as residual stress, torn and folded metals, less surface finish, surface irregularities, micro-cracks, heat affected zone, reduction of strength, and reliability of the part, etc. Moreover, the traditional finishing processes can finish the surface upto a certain level because of the use of the rigid hard bonded abrasives tool and further to achieve a fine level of surface finishing without surface defects may not be possible. Therefore, there is a mandatory requirement of the advanced finishing processes to finish the internal surface of the cylindrical components after the traditional finishing processes for enhancing their operational life in various machines or systems. 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.