Sustainable diamond burnishing of 17-4 PH stainless steel for enhanced surface integrity and product performance by using a novel modified tool

Abstract

A major sustainability concern of manufacturing industries is indiscriminate use of lubrication, energy consumption, and allied cost. To avoid such kind of situation and to improve the product quality, sustainable manufacturing concept has been widely used. One of the popular technique is the use of Minimum Quantity Lubrication (MQL) as a working fluid to improve the product performance. Diamond burnishing under MQL environment is an exceptional technique to obtain the improved surface integrity of the material without affecting operator health and environmental aspects. In this work, the impact of control factors on the surface integrity characteristics namely surface roughness, surface topography, surface hardness, surface morphology, residual stress and subsurface hardness of 17-4 PH stainless steel have been studied under MQL environment by using a novel modified tool. It was ensured that minimum surface roughness of 0.05 μm and maximum surface hardness of 405 HV had been achieved. Improved surface finish and surface hardness were obtained for a diamond sphere radius of 4 mm and 3 mm respectively under optimal diamond burnishing conditions. The obtained investigational results confirm that a novel modified tool was successfully implemented to enhance the surface integrity characteristics under the MQL environment.