Study on the inner surface finishing of tubing by magnetic abrasive finishing

With the development of industry manufacturing technology, fine surface finish is in high demand in a wide spectrum of industrial applications. Presently, it is required that the parts used in manufacturing semiconductors, atomic energy parts, medical instruments and aerospace components have a very precise surface roughness. Amongst them, vacuum tubes, wave guides and sanitary tubes are difficult to polish by conventional finishing methods such as lapping, because of their shapes. The surface roughness of these tubes affects the performance of the entire system, but the finishing technology for these tubes is very scant in manufacturing fields. This project was proposed by a Shanghai Far East pharmaceutial and mechanical factory. They stated that the roughness of the inner surface must be less than 0.3 mum Ra after finishing. An internal magnetic abrasive finishing (MAF) process is proposed for producing highly finished inner surfaces of tubes used in this study. The process principle and the finishing characteristics of unbounded magnetic abrasive within internal tubing finishing are described first. MAF setup was designed for finishing three kinds of materials tubing, such as Ly12 aluminum alloy, 316L stainless steel and H62 brass. Experimental results indicated that finishing parameters such as polishing speed, magnetic abrasive supply, abrasive material, magnetic abrasive manufacturing process and grain size have critical effects on the material removal rate (MRR). How the inner surface micro shape changes course during finishing of an aluminous tube is demonstrated. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.