A Study for the Nanofinishing of an EN-31 Workpiece with Pulse DC Power Supply Using Ball-End Magnetorheological Finishing

Abstract

Ball-end magnetorheological finishing (BEMRF) is a high-level nanofinishing process used in finishing different kinds of surfaces including flat, 2- and 3-dimensional, and curved surfaces. In the present study, a pulse DC power supply is used to energize the electromagnet of magnetorheological (MR) finishing tool. The experiments have been conducted on EN-31 flat workpiece surface with and without pulse DC power supply using a magnetizing current (MC) 2.5 A, a working gap (WG) of 1.5 mm and a rotational speed of the tool (RST) of 500 rpm with a feed rate of workpiece of 50 mm/min. The study has been carried out to analyse the effect of the duty cycle on the response percentage reduction in surface roughness. It has been observed that an improved response percentage reduction in surface roughness has been found with pulsating DC power supply as compared to the response percentage reduction in surface roughness obtained with DC power supply without pulse at the same process parameters. After conducting the preliminary experiments, the statistical analysis was done to analyse the effect of various process parameters on the response percentage reduction in surface roughness using response surface methodology (RSM) at 0.16 duty cycle.