Effect of polishing fluid composition on forces in ball end magnetorheological finishing process

Ball end magnetorheological finishing is a nanofinishing process that uses magnetorheological polishing (MRP) fluid containing carbonyl iron particles (CIPs) and polishing grade abrasives to remove materials from the workpiece surface. The composition of the MRP fluid greatly influences the finishing forces. Using a dynamometer both normal and shear forces applied by the MRP are recorded on-line. A central composite design of experiments is used to plan the experiments and ANOVA to correlate these forces and process parameters. The process parameters selected here are vol.% of CIPs and vol.% of abrasives which are varied from 5% to 25% and 5% to 20% respectively to measure the forces during experimentation. Both normal and shear forces increase with increase in the CIPs content in the fluid. In case of abrasive concentration, it is observed that the forces initially increase with increase in abrasive content but begins to decline after a certain point.