AN EXPERIMENTAL ANALYSIS OF MAGNETIC ABRASIVES FINISHING OF PLANE SURFACES

Abstract

Magnetic abrasive finishing (MAF) uses magnetic force of very low magnitude applied on ferromagnetic abrasive particles to obtain very high level surface finish. The process has been investigated extensively in the finishing of cylindrical surfaces. This paper reports an experimental work on the analysis of surface roughness and material removal using response surface method in the MAF of plane surfaces. The surface finish was found to improve significantly with an increase in the grain size, relative size of abrasive particles vis-à-vis the iron particles, feed rate and current. The optimum parameter levels which gave better surface finish and the higher material removal were also obtained from this experimentation.