EXPERIMENTAL INVESTIGATION OF THE ABRASIVE FLOW MACHINING PROCESS

Abstract

With the development of technology, more and more challenging problems are faced by the scientists and technologists in the field of manufacturing. Especially finishing operation in metal working industries adopting the traditional finishing process represents critical and expensive phase of overall production. A new non-traditional process called abrasive flow machining (AFM) provides the accuracy, efficiency, and economy needed. AFM is a finishing process that is used to deburr, polish, radius, remove recast layers or produce compressive residual stresses. It provides uniform, repeatable and predictable results. It can process many areas on a single work piece or multiple parts simultaneously and complex internal passages can be finished economically and productively. AFM process is still in it infancy in many respects. The process mechanism, parameteric relationship and surface integrity issues have not been effectively addressed. AFM involves equipments of moderately high cost and expensive fixturing, and process media selection is critical to process most parts effectively. This dissertation reports the study of the AFM abrasive flow machining on number of 'different type of work pieces by various combinations of media. It includes some aspects of AFM process parameters and surface characteristics. SEM indicate that radius occurs at the inlet of holes and smear does not take place but the surface improvement is due to shearing motion and microchips do form in the process. The effect -of process input parameters like number of AFM cycles, grit size, passage length, passage diameter, pressure, piston displacement i.e. volume flow rate. On the process performance characteristics such as metal removal and percentage of surface finish improvement are discussed. Also the metal removal distribution and flow characteristics of AFM are discussed. (