A magnetic abrasive finishing process was proposed for improving the surface accuracy of microscale -diameter STS 304 bar used in many applications such as, medical, aerospace, and nuclear industries. Most of the previous research has already explored the conventional finishing technique to improve the accuracy of material in terms of the surface roughness. However, their results are still not good enough for the requirement in the today’s engineering industry. Especially, when the workpiece is a material of microscale-diameter, use of such conventional processes becomes impossible because they entail the application of high pressures that may damage the surface to be finished. Moreover, less control is available over these conventional finishing processes. In this study, an ultra-high-precision magnetic abrasive finishing process was applied to the precision machining of microscale-diameter STS 304 bar and the experimental work are performed with many critical parameters such as, different workpiece revolution speeds, abrasive grain sizes, different finishing temperatures, and pole vibrations. The results showed that in The initial surface roughness of 0.20 μm (Ra) was decreased to 0.025 μm with 0.5 μm of abrasive grain size and pole vibration 12Hz at 40,000 rpm.
In this research, the magnetic abrasive finishing process using (Nd-Fe-B) permanent magnet was applied to confirm the performance and to find the optimum conditions. The STS304 bar was used as the specimen in this experiment. In order to confirm the performance of magnetic abrasive finishing process, the surface roughness (Ra) and diameter reduction were measured when the specimens were processed under the conditions of rotational speeds, frequencies, and magnetic pole shapes. The rotational speeds were varied at 8000rpm, 15000rpm, 20000rpm, and 25000rpm. And the frequencies were changed to 0Hz, 4Hz and 10Hz. Also the shapes of the magnetic pole were changed to flat edge, sharp edge and round edge. It can be concluded that the surface roughness (Ra) and diameter reduction were found to be the best at 25000rpm, 4Hz, flat edge.