Kinematic analysis and experimental investigation on vibratory finishing

Vibratory finishing has been widely used for surface polishing, burnishing, edge finishing, texturing, and cleaning with a wide variety of different media. Medium properties and their motions dominate material removal efficiency and surface treatment quality in the vibratory finishing process. In this study, medium kinematic model and movement simulation of vibratory finishing were developed. Medium motion simulation was verified through a digit video recorded by a high-speed camera. It was found that medium kinematic path line is a circular-feeding helical motion, which is determined by the angular velocity ratio between the rolling and feeding, the rotation direction, and vibratory finishing machine configuration. Material removal intensity model was further established based on the kinematic model in order to better understand the vibratory finishing process. The optimal fixing location and orientation of workpiece were obtained through the analysis of the kinematic model. Finishing experiments were further carried out for the Ti6Al4V test pieces which were fixed onto the wall of a vibratory bowl. The surface roughness, Ra values (with initial surface roughness of 1.50 μm), approached to 0.13 μm after processing time of 2.5 h and 0.10 μm after processing time of 6.0 h. Surface quality of finished test pieces has been significantly improved as compared with the existing method (i.e., loosed workpiece in the vibratory bowl), whereby the surface roughness, Ra values (with initial surface roughness of 1.50 μm), tapered off (saturated) to about 0.52 μm with the increase of processing time.