Investigation on Process Parameters of Ball Screw Finishing Using Magnetic Abrasive Field

Surface finishing is one of the most significant steps in industries which are engaged with surface quality. Finishing by magnetic field is a new method of surface finishing. In this process, machining is executed in mechanical way and semi-homogeneous abrasive slurry performs finishing of surfaces. Needed force to grind surfaces is made by magnetic field. Therefor this method is considered as an advanced machining method. One of application of advanced machining methods is working in situation which conventional methods are not applicable. Nowadays helical and spiral parts have an important position in industry. This result in more attention about manufacturing and finishing of parts. This mechanism is used to finish helical ball screw in CNC machine using magnetic field created by Nd-Fe-B permanent magnet. In executed experiments four parameters which affected on surface quality were investigated. These parameters included feed rate, particles size and amount of ferromagnetic particles. The effect of most parameters was positive and caused to improve surface quality, but generally each parameter had an optimum amount in which by reaching this amount, reducing in efficiency and surface quality was observed. Also, some parameters such as cutting speed had lower effect. The initial specimen had surface roughness of 1.017 µm and the best resultant surface quality was 0.325 µm.