Effect of topography on glossiness and surface color for a 5052 aluminum alloy

Abstract

This paper is investigated experimentally about the effect of topography to the glossiness and surface color in order to characterize a surface texture of aluminum alloy 5052. The surfaces of specimens are machined by using a vertical milling machine, a horizontal milling machine and a shaping machine. Four kinds of specimens are machined by each machine so that the arithmetical mean roughness value, Ra, is less than 1 μm at four cutting conditions. From the results of experiments, the glossiness values of the vertical milling surface and the horizontal milling surface were about the same value, meanwhile the glossiness value of the shaping surface was less than half the value of the others. The surface color of specimens was gray. Especially, The lightness value of surface color, L*, of the horizontal milling surface was the highest value. The surface color was whitish gray of all machined surface. Based on those experimental results, it was summarized that the surface texture of specimen machined various machine could be characterized by the glossiness and surface color. These results could be an effective indicator in choosing the most proper machining method to add value to surface texture.