Research Projects

The demand for super finished components in advanced engineering applications is high. Magnetorheological (MR) finishing is a fine finishing process that relies on the magnetorheological effect, which allows for gentle finishing and flexible nano finishing. This research work aims to design and develop a changeover type finishing tool for nonmagnetic components with complex surfaces, such as flat, concave, convex, cylindrical, conical, and threaded components. Conventional finishing methods struggle to finish these surfaces due to shape limitations and threaded components' difficulty in precise finishing. A soft deformable tool similar to the MR finishing process could be used instead of a hard tool. Ball end magnetorheological finishing is a variant of the MR finishing process, but it is incapable of effectively finishing non-magnetic materials like copper, aluminum, glass, ceramics, and plastics due to the absence of an induced magnetic pole at the workpiece. The proposed work proposes a tool similar to the ball end magnetorheological finishing but with axial extrusion pressure to the magnetized polishing fluid for non-magnetic components. The stiffened MR polishing fluid will be extruded through the tooltip and pressurized to flow radially through the working gap. The applied force on the stiffened MR polishing fluid will gain stiffness by the applied magnetic field, achieving normal finishing force. Using the proposed extrusion pressure-based magnetorheological finishing tool, workpieces made of different non-magnetic materials and configurations can be finished.

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