Development of a honing process for the combination machining of hardened axisymmetric parts

This paper presents a novel concept to enhance the conventional combination machining ‘turning and grinding’ by a long-stroke honing process for finishing bores of axisymetric parts. Honing is the best choice when the surface integrity of tribologically highly-stressed parts is of vital importance. The presented approach reduces the required overall machining time when compared with that of the conventional machining sequence on separate machine tools, and also enhances the production accuracy through a single clamping setup. The fundamental details like tool design, infeed strategies and possible process-chains of the developed approach for honing on a combination machining center are explained. Experimental results of two different process-chains are analyzed: Firstly, the ‘turning-grinding-honing’ (TGH-chain), where honing is conducted after the grinding process; and secondly, the ‘turning-honing’ (TH-chain), where honing is applied directly after the rough turning. The experiments showed promising results for the applied position-controlled infeed strategy of the developed long-stroke honing process regarding the production efficiency.