ELECTROCHEMICAL HONING OF FLAT SURFACES

Abstract

This thesis reports the experimental investigation of flat surfaces by electrochemical honing (ECH) process. Electrochemical honing is one of the hybrid micro finishing technique which is originated by combination of electrochemical machining and mechanical honing. Most of the S material (almost 90%) removes from work surface by electrochemical machining (ECM) and rest by honing action. Based upon the literature reviews, ECH can produce surface roughness up to 0.05m and tolerance±0.002, while material removal rate is 2 to 8 times more than the conventional processes such as grinding, honing, etc. Present study contains a detailed description of process principle affecting parameters, process capabilities, and effect of input parameters, equipment details, and applications. Unfortunately, most manufacturing processes produce part with surface that have geometrical inaccuracy or unsatisfactory from quality of surface texture. In case of finishing of metallic flat surfaces, few machining processes are available like lapping and grinding, but on the basis of literature reviews these processes are not given satisfactory result in case of finishing of hard and tough flat metallic components. In the modem days flat surfaces required high surface finish, and flatness on the work surfaces for example metallic valve plate of hard and tough material used in gas compressors, surface plate (in high precision inspection), resurfacing of cylinder head, metallic gaskets (multilayer stainless steel gaskets), sliding bed of machine etc., but lapping is the only available process for finishing of these surfaces while traditional lapping is cumbersome process using wet abrasive slurry to slow finish parts to precise flatness and surface finish. The abrasive slurry requires extensive, time taking cleaning of both part and equipment. Even with the cleaning, abrasive particles are frequently ground into the part itself causing "grit penetration" that can hurt the parts perfomance particularly in fluid sealing application. ECH has capabilities and potential to be developed as an alternative to conventional finishing like lapping and can play an important contribution as high surface finish and flatness. ECH can be applied to obtain better results in application area of metallic flat surfaces. The purpose of present study is to find the electrolytic and mechanical coordination of ECH process on the proposed work material (SS304) and work surface profile (flat).