Experimental investigation on developed one-way abrasive flow finishing machine with pneumatic system

Abstract

Abrasive Flow Finishing is one of the important non-convectional finishing process which is used to polish, deburr and finish internal surfaces. In this process, burrs or cutting marks are removed by allowing semi-solid, abrasive dispersed putty, with pressure into the workpiece material. In the present work, a prototype of Abrasive Flow Finishing Machine (AFFM) with pneumatic system is developed and used to finish the internal surfaces of the drilled hole on AISI 304 SS material. In this there are two operations are carried out, i.e. drilling and finishing operations by Abrasive Flow Finishing (AFF). First the hole is drilled with 10 mm size on the workpiece by varying speed and feed as input parameters followed by AFF operation with a pressure of 5 bar by using silicon carbide as abrasive with an abrasive mesh size (80 & 220) and number of cycles (5 & 10) considered as input parameters. The output responses for drilling and AFF operations are considered as initial surface roughness and final surface roughness. From the experiments, it is observed that abrasive mesh size and the number of cycles are playing a significant role in the AFF operation and to improve surface finish from 30 to 40% with minimum pressure of 5 bar by using pneumatic system.