Investigation of Finishing Aluminum Alloy A5052 Using the Magnetic Abrasive Finishing Combined with Electrolytic Process

Abstract

The magnetic abrasive finishing combined with electrolytic (EMAF) process was proposed to improve the finishing efficiency of the traditional magnetic abrasive finishing (MAF) process. Since the EMAF process contains electrolysis reactions, the machining mechanism of processing different metal is different. In this paper, a series of experiments were conducted to explore the feasibility of using the compound processing tool to finish aluminum alloy A5052, and to preliminary explore the machining mechanism. Surface roughness and material removal are used to evaluate the finishing effect and the finishing efficiency, respectively. The EMAF processing current curve is used to evaluate and analyze the EMAF process. The feasibility of the EMAF processing is proved by the analysis of simulations and the experimental results. Finally, through a series of exploration experiments and parameter optimization experiments, the main conclusions are as follows: (1) Compared with the traditional MAF process, when finishing the surface of aluminum alloy A5052 by the same compound processing tool and at the same experimental conditions (except the electrolysis conditions), the EMAF process, which includes electrolysis reactions, can achieve higher finishing efficiency. (2) In this study, when the working gap is 1 mm and the concentration of NaNO3 solution is 15%, the recommended processing voltage is about 3.4 V.